The Alter Ego Revisited
by Arual-san
Summary: Robin takes on a mission from Batman to investigate troubling matters at his former academy in Gotham. No mask, just the Dick Grayson he hasn't been for two years. What happens when Beast Boy decides to tag along using Cyborg's holographic generator?
1. Chapter 1

Always thought Robin and Beast Boy's friendship got neglected in both the series and on this site. They're my favorite characters in Teen Titans too. : ( No more frowns for me though. I can fill in my own blanks! : D

I accept constructive criticism but I don't have nerves of steel so mind your manners please. You may still get your point across, just don't be a jerk about it. Please no flames, drastic changes or begging for pairings in the story. I might sprinkle a little romance here and there but it's not my specialty. This fic is Action/Adventure/Friendship/Humor – my _favorite_ multi-categories! Hooray! : D

Reviews are always appreciated and they make the chapters come faster. Enjoy!

Arual-san

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At Titans Tower, everything but the security system had shut down for the night and gone into standby. Only the security system remained active to conserve power. The hour was late and the team was fast reaching their set time to turn. Although the tower should have currently been empty, lights started to flash on, racing ahead of a certain pair of footsteps to the main den.

With his cape whipping behind him like a black and yellow sail, Robin marched into the den with a purpose.

Upon being paged by a certain number, he had gone straight from his patrol to the tower with no deviances in between. He was aware of nothing else; not the mountain of dishes that it was his turn to wash, nor that Silkie – their unusual pet silkworm – was currently devouring its fifth throw pillow that week. The only thing Robin cared about was the remote next to the creature.

He switched on the screen; the display stretched across the wide windows, declaring that it had one new message.

Though Robin's masked eyes narrowed at the message, and what he knew lay behind it, he didn't click it open. A simple message wouldn't be sufficient, so he called the number instead. He didn't take a seat but stood in wait as the phone rang.

His former partner never kept him waiting long.

The screen flashed to life, displaying a rocky cave that he knew well, and a rigid face which he knew better. Neither of these familiar things made him feel the gushy, homesick nostalgia most would feel; instead, he felt a certain degree of contempt. They'd not separated on the best of terms.

"_Need_ something?" Robin asked snidely, getting straight to the point.

"Two years and that's the welcome I get?" Batman returned. Robin, knowing the subtle ticks of his mentor, figured that the man's eyebrows had risen slightly beneath the cowl. Batman, of course, wasn't expecting an answer; he didn't receive one.

"You pulled me off of patrol, and I almost lost a mugger in the streets because of the distraction."

"But you didn't."

"No, I didn't," Robin said, irritated at feeling patronized. "But don't think that you can just call me whenever you please and I'll coming running like a dog. I have my own city to manage."

Batman had the tact not to bring up that Robin had actually just done that exact thing: run to his call like a dog. The headstrong boy had outgrown the need to impress his guardian when he had hit twelve, and he sure as hell didn't feel that he owed the Bat his undying servitude. His reasons for calling back were strictly professional; he was sure his mentor's were the same.

The Dark Knight wasn't calling to catch up with his young ward.

"There is a case that I've been investigating for some time," Batman stated, delving straight into the specifics.

He pulled up a set of case files that opened in a separate window on the screen; Robin swiftly scanned through key points of the articles before they could become overlapped with more recent files. Robin could pour his usual mad devotion into his detective work going through the many files, but he was sure that Batman had already done that very thing.

"Batgirl has been patrolling Gotham City while I've been away with the Justice League for the past several weeks. It seems like all of the thugs in the universe have been causing trouble at home in response.

"No surprises there," Robin said dryly. "They heard that you were out of town."

Robin was still standing with crossed arms, impatient to get this call over with. Batman had paused for a less than a second to notice this act of impatience but was then straight back to business like the pause had never occurred.

"We've noticed an unusual amount of shipments being transferred from Gotham by an ex-con named Korbin Renwei, an alien from the Horse-Head Nebula," Batman said. "The size and volume of these shipments match his claims that he is bartering grains but the numbers don't. Through a little digging and hacking into their systems, I've found that he is not shipping these "grains" to the planets of mineral-poor soil like he claims."

Robin listened without interruption. He waited.

"_Some_ of these "grains" end up in those locations for show. Most are being shipped to the industrial trade world planets, the metal worlds that wouldn't have the resources or space for so much as a sprout to bloom." He clearly didn't believe Renwei's legitimate business for a minute or that the contents label was for real. These were strict industrial planets that were additionally ill-equipped to process the raw material into something unusable. Without sending the shipment to a middle man, an agricultural planet, it was a wasted effort and a costly one at that, since the shipments were transported across the stars. The issue over whether a criminal could really reform had been one of the many issues Batman and Robin had bashed heads over but there would be no bashing now under the suspicious circumstances.

"Unfortunately, my presence in their systems was detected before I had managed to record this evidence on a hard drive. Their security has tightened ten-fold and all incriminating data has been covered up."

"I figured as much through the notes," said Robin, finally speaking. He'd been multitasking with half his attention on Batman, and half on the files without missing a thing. He had a bright mind, but there was only so much an outside eye could grasp.

"Batgirl was out on night patrol, when she saw a beam of light shoot off into the sky. It lasted no more than four seconds, but she was certain that it was the glare of a teleportation device. That it was even allowed to be seen by earth's public is a misdemeanor in accordance with universal laws."

Robin shook his head. "Not enough to charge him with anything more than a fine, though.

"The reason that I called you is because of the particular location of the teleportation beam. I may have my influences in this city, but the assignment to find and break up this smuggling ring is an undercover assignment that is impossible for me."

Robin had been about to ask the question of where but Batman was quicker; he pulled up a final page over the articles.

The whites in Robin's mask widened a little and for the first time in the conversation he hadn't the sass to maintain his crossed arms. They uncrossed and fell to his sides.

"You're sure this is the right location?"

Batman's stoic expression did not change. "I trained her the same way that I trained you. There is no mistake."

"This all seems awfully convenient," Robin couldn't help but notice, his surprise changing to surliness. "You're sure this isn't some ruse of Alfred's to get me to come home? When I get there you say, 'I already solved the case; but, since you're here Robin, stick around for the weekend and we can bury the hatchet'?"

"Get it straight that I am not forcing this on you, Robin," Batman replied, evenly but with a harsh ring at the boy's sarcasm. "You are free to decide; but, if this case is to be cracked, you are the only one suitable to do it."

Robin seemed to be done conversing with the Bat; however, the screen remained online since neither moved to sever the connection. Batman could intimidate criminals into confessions with that stone-cold silence. It took zero effort on his part, while lesser heroes exhausted their superpowers to accomplish the same. It was only natural that, after eight years, his ward had become immune to its effects, even at the level which Batman was applying it.

"You can't run away forever," said Batman lowly. "I've tried." Robin was surprised, as Batman rarely was the first to break a silence.

Feeling that he had wasted enough time as it was, Robin finally glanced away and said, curtly, "I'll be there in two days. Robin out."

Without waiting for a response, he turned the screen off and watched as it faded away to reveal again the shores of Jump City.

The teen only stared for a few moments at the mildly rolling tides beyond the tower and how very dark the night had become. The conversation had been a long one, and any criminals were bound to be heading home for the night. It was time for all of the Titans to be done patrolling; they should have been back by now.

He turned back around to the den of the tower and pointed the remote to the stereo. It was such a harsh transition from the quiet of the tower to the eardrum-splintering rock music of Cyborg's new favorite band that it flushed out the other four Titans at once, screaming and covering their ears, from their hiding places behind the kitchen counters.

Robin switched the stereo off just as quickly as he had turned it on, and threw the remote back onto the couch. He walked into the center of the den with the same deliberate steps he'd taken walking in.

"Next time you try _spying_ on me," Robin growled, not bothering to hide his irritation with his teammates, "_don't_."

Cyborg and Beast Boy wore similar looks of embarrassment for getting caught in such an act while Raven acted like she'd been dragged into the whole affair. With her own level of personal secrecy, she probably had been. They'd taken such care sneaking off back to the tower to follow Robin after their communicators had buzzed with that call from an unknown number, after Robin had been acting so very secretive about its caller.

However their patrols had ended several minutes ago and the den wasn't exactly the place for a secret call.

"Friend Robin, do not be upset," Starfire jumped in at once. The first to recover, she came over to hover at Robin's side. "We were merely curious as to whom you were speaking so very late at night."

"Who? _Who!?_" Beast Boy demanded. He acted like he was insulted, springing to his feet and quite forgetting his previous embarrassment. "That was Batman! _The_ Batman! Only one of the greatest superheroes to grace the planet! Where have you been living, _Mars!?_"

Starfire looked puzzled. "I am unsure why you ask this, as I know you are aware that I have been living with all of you for the past two years. However, you say that this Man of Bats is a fighter of crime as we are?"

"_YES!_" Beast Boy just about yelled at her. "He practically invented what it is to be a true, blue hero! He's like – like the majorest of all Major Leagues! He's-!"

A burning glare from Robin shut the green changeling up. The overkill praising of his guardian wasn't helping his mood. The Titans had undertaken feats just as great as the Bat. They'd saved the world from falling under the control of the skyscraper-tall demon Trigon for pity's sake and much more. They weren't just a bunch of stupid kids; that one of his own teammates didn't seem to acknowledge this fact, made Robin even angrier.

"So what's the deal?" Cyborg asked, getting on with the subject. (Beast Boy morphed into a mouse and hid behind Cyborg's hulking form to escape Robin's glare.) "You flying back to the nest for a while, Robin?"

"I'll be gone for a week or so," Robin responded to the first question, ignoring the teasing in the second. "In that time you'll be in charge, Cyborg."

"Do we get any details?" Although she'd been forced to eavesdrop with the others, Raven couldn't help but share a part in their curiosity.

Her croaky inquiry hit their leader just before he'd reached the main door; he couldn't walk out and pretend he hadn't heard. Robin stopped there as the others waited to hear his answer; an aura of disgust hanging heavily around him.

His shoulders slumped slightly, still coming to terms with it himself. "I'm going back to school."


	2. Chapter 2

"The "school" is some manner of punishment, yes?"

Afternoon had stretched into late evening. With all of his business in order, checking to see that his friends were all ready and prepared for his week-long absence, Robin was ready to go and Starfire was there to see him off. She currently hovered around the boy like a floating shadow as took his final step of packing what he would need for his trip to Gotham. Unlike their recent trip to Tokyo, he only required one additional uniform of the fleet of identical ones in his closet and even that was for the off chance that he crashed the jet into a body of water and needed a set of dry clothes. Unlikely, but one could never be too prepared.

After that it was back to civilian clothes.

"In a manner of speaking," Robin sighed in response to her question. He only needed to pack a light load and it was packed so he started down the hallway as Starfire continued on, sticking to him all the more than usual when he would soon be gone.

"Then we must assist you!"

The thought of his friends accompanying him to his former academy formed and he didn't even need to go beyond outer appearances: orange skin, grey skin, green skin and technologically advanced metal plating in a place where wearing the wrong kind of shoes would equal a demerit. He'd be caught the moment he set a foot on campus.

"That's all right, Star. I think I'd rather take this mission on solo."

The overly strict rules and regulations of Birnamwood Academy would be a far cry from the freedom he had in the tower, what he'd hated most when he was last in attendance despite his by-the-book tendencies. Schools…or _prisons_ like that stomped out any sense of individuality and free speech. As leader, Robin felt the responsibility not to place this burden on anyone else without good cause.

"Besides," he added, when Starfire seemed a little down when he didn't want her there, "unless you and Raven go drag they're not going to let you through the front doors."

"I must drag something along behind me on a rope?" Starfire asked, suddenly curious. "What must I drag?"

"It's slang talk."

"Ah yes, the words of slang!" Starfire beamed, both for that she recognized the term and that she was to gain another tidbit of information of the strange language that was English. "When the words mean not what they say in efforts to confuse and infuriate all new speakers of English! But please, I do not feel the fury, what is the second meaning of this "drag"?"

Robin grinned. He'd not been looking forward to getting up that morning knowing today was the day he would have to answer Batman's call but, in a way only she could, Starfire was lifting that bad mood rather than annoying him with the lack of personal space she showed.

"It means you'd have to dress up like a guy. The place I'm headed is a boys-only institution."

She pulled a face at that and was just a little too slow in covering it up again. Robin didn't seem to mind much her reaction but still she waved her hands, determined to have her say.

"I am sure that is it simply _wondrous_ living life as a boy!" she declared with a little too much cheer. "Umm…keeping the up of the vehicles, having the reputation and the happiness dependant all on the high score of the X-ed box, what fun!"

Robin shook his head and kept back even a small chuckle when Starfire was trying to make amends for a perceived insult. They'd reached the final hall where the others were sure to be getting in a late dinner so as to see off their leader. Being teenagers, they could all eat and sleep at any time of the day and not be knocked out of whack the next day.

"I agree," he said lowly in that their time alone was short. "You do a much better job of being a girl."

Her long purple clogs clopped as Starfire touched down to the floor for the first time that morning instead of hovering a few inches above it in her excitement in seeing him off. Brilliant green eyes were only for him and she pounced on him with a hug.

"I will miss you, umm…" she started, pink painting her cheeks, "_boyfriend_."

His free arm slid around her bare waist to return the gesture. "I'll miss you too, Star," he said, making a mental note of that special touch he was going to miss most. "I'll find some time when I get back to take you on that date we have to keep putting off."

"The date that is not the fruit?" she asked, hoping with twinkling eyes.

"That's the one."

With a pleased murmur, she nuzzled into his shoulder a little more. "Do not keep me waiting long."

There wasn't anything he'd packed that could be broken from that small height and so Robin felt the sudden urge to drop the suitcase all together. Dropping it meant that his full attention was for Starfire and with his newly freed hand he pulled her into a kiss.

Their own personal farewell before joining the others.

When they felt it was time to pull away, Starfire's blush seemed to have infected Robin as well. No matter how right it felt, having made the transition from friend to something more was still something each of them was getting used to in their own way.

A bowl of spaghetti was ready and waiting for the two on the counter when they entered the den. Raven had already finished and was enveloped in one of her many books while Beast Boy looked as if he'd barely picked at his half at all. He was focused not on filling his stomach but on fiddling with something small in his hands under the table, something that sounded metallic.

Something he hid with great haste when the doors opened.

"H-hey guys!" he greeted and from his crouch he straightened into an ironing board. "Nice weather, huh?"

Robin wasn't so dazed from his previous affair not to notice the strange behavior but instead of inquiring of Beast Boy directly he asked Raven.

"As if I know or _care_ how his weird little mind works," she answered dryly, flipping a page as the green face across from her scrunched up in indignation. "Cyborg took his plate downstairs to run a diagnostics check on your part of the T-Ship, Robin. Said it shouldn't take long."

When the team was all fed and watered they headed downstairs to join their cybernetic friend who was hard at work under the hood of the main body of the ship. Though all five sections of it were tough enough to survive the unforgiving conditions of both deep sea and deep space, in that a Titan was heading off alone Cyborg needed to make sure everything was functioning at maximum capacity.

"Purrin' like a kitten," he declared, slamming down the hood. Cyborg turned to Robin with a wry grin, "Take your time on your little trip, man." He turned to the rest. "As temporary leader I do hereby promise to uphold the rights to more pizza and movie nights, y'all!"

Some amount of Starfire's gloom of Robin leaving was suddenly replaced with glee that the week was to be filled with brain-eating zombies, larger than life action stars and star-crossed lovers, a glee that Beast Boy joined in on with her a few seconds late as if he was thinking of something else.

"Hooray," Raven contributed with a half-hearted root, nose in her book.

"I am excited too, Raven!" Starfire returned, clasping hold of the other girl's arm. "We are to have the girl talk and the painting of the nails and braiding of the hair! We are to watch Romeo get his Juliet and ride happily away into the sunset!"

Raven's face flattened into a look most bored. "Can't you just do that stuff with Beast Boy?"

"_Hey!_ That's chick stuff!"

"You _do_ wear a purple jumpsuit, oh masculine one," Raven pointed out, plenty sharp even when her attention was on her book.

"Speedsuit!"

"Whatever."

"It's no vacation," Robin grumbled back as if anyone was still listening. He tossed in his one piece of luggage and jumped into the cockpit after. His teammates all seemed to notice him again when he revved the engine. He couldn't tell what they were saying through the bubble-shaped dome but their shining faces and/or waves said what words didn't.

Robin gave a flick of his hand to his teammates. He engaged the jet's thrusters and was off.

To start a new name for himself without the shadow of the Bat looming over him, Robin had traveled halfway across the nation and so found himself flying all that way back. With the speed of his jet, Jump City was in his hindsight and fading fast within several minutes.

He didn't think of himself as nostalgic but he found himself looking back on the city in his rearview until it was gone. There he was leaving one home to go back to another.

Many of the states Robin passed through were having their cloudy days and he could only view the landscapes of grain or meadows below when the slow moving clouds crawled by to reveal a patch. He had music booming through the stereos to keep him awake throughout the night but still he made sure to look out the window once in a while to stave off any road vision even when the only other traffic was the occasional flock of birds.

An hour passed and sooner than he'd have liked sleep started pulling at his senses; probably because he'd not gotten enough sleep the night before in making sure every loose string was tied for his absence.

First it was just something small, a jerk of the steering wheel; then it was something bigger, a slight decrease in altitude.

"Stop it," Robin growled to himself, trying to shake it off, leveling out the jet. He was more disciplined than that to let a little fatigue get the better of him, hadn't he been trained by one of the top superheroes the country had to offer?

He'd reasoned before that this flight of his would be nonstop and that was how it was going to stay. After the whole ugly business with the Brotherhood of Evil the nation knew well of the exploits of the Teen Titans and honorary Titans and if any of those shunned villains happened to find him while he was asleep in a parked jet…

Another possibility just as unlikely as the first he had conceived of crashing into a body of water. Still, he just couldn't feel comfortable landing. He'd just have to focus on other things to keep his mind alert from the sky ahead that never changed.

"Let's see," he thought aloud, seeking out mental stimulants. The chorus in the song he was listening to came up and he echoed the words of it, did the same for a few songs after. Good start.

"Hmm…" Robin did some quick calculations of the miles per hour he was making and the scenery below. "Must be in Missouri or Illinois by now…ah Chicago! The Field Museum of Natural History…" he said, looking right. "Lake Michigan," he said, looking left.

He caught a glance of something in his peripherals.

"_Green goose!?_" Shocked right out of his fatigue, his hands gave a sharp jerk to the steering wheel, scattering the poor flock of geese flying alongside him but thankfully hitting none.

Mechanisms blared warnings at him for pulling such a stunt at such a high speed but Robin kept his cool in the tiny vessel that could, under the wrong hands, spiral back down to earth. He had the right hands and he got the ship under control.

As soon as he did, Robin whipped his head back to catch any glance of the animal he'd seen…or thought he'd seen when his senses were slightly numbed with sleepiness. His thoughts flew immediately to Beast Boy and he kept his eyes peeled.

Minutes passed and the dim-minded geese were back to flying beside the larger metallic bird like nothing had ever happened. Goose feathers could repel water but not the algae within it and three members of the flock seemed to have gone fishing in a particularly green pond.

If that had been what he had seen he couldn't be sure.

"Beast Boy…" he growled, projecting his thoughts aloud, "you'd _better_ not be following me."

If the little green starfish now suctioned onto the underside of the jet had been equipped with a brain it might've had the mind to wipe the sweat from its brow at the very close call.

The familiar rising towers of Gotham City were a welcome sight after the flight through multiple time zones. There was the original Wayne Enterprises building that started the branches throughout the country and the police department roof where the Bat Signal Light rested as well as the less welcome sights of Arkham and Blackgate that some of the worst supervillians in the world were still locked up in even now.

His jet wasn't recognized as the Batwing, nor was he flying slow enough to recognized as Robin, but at its low altitude it still drew the attention of the late-nighters on the streets.

Robin flew from the city to the outskirts where he knew a certain cave existed. He slowed the jet, prepared the landing equipment and the two hour long flight in that moment seemed now to be a very short one in that he was again in the cave that he had put in so much effort to leave behind.

No sooner than he had jumped out of the cockpit…

"Master Richard!"

The higher than norm infliction in Alfred's tone told that he was delighted to see the young man again even if the old butler's proper upbringing prevented him from setting down his tray and rushing ahead to give his greetings.

"Hey, Alfred," Robin greeted warmly, having nothing but good feelings to the man. "Long time no see."

"_Too_ long if you ask me," responded the butler with his subtle wit as he set the tray down near the Batcave's super-computer. "Milk and cookies after your flight, young master? Fresh from the oven."

"I'm _not_ a little kid anymore," Robin answered but his words weren't solely directed toward Alfred when Robin's gaze was only for the chair at the computer.

Though he played a certain kind of parental role to them both, Alfred stepped aside on this one. He took a chocolate chip cookie from the untouched tray and bit in. "Never too old for a cookie."

In saying that, the old butler was likely reminding not just Robin but them both.

Robin waited but the chair never made a full rotation. Instead Batman made a minimal effort of shifting the muscles in his neck to face his young ward. "Welcome home, Dick."

It was such a simple, normal response from the Bat that it stole away the thought of whatever Robin had originally been intending to say. Recovering, he lamely offered, "Yeah."

That preposterously short exchange was all the two stubborn heroes seemed capable of at the current moment and had he not been the gentleman he was Alfred may have rolled his eyes. He rather finished his cookie and presented Robin with a freshly laundered set of pajamas.

"So," started the old butler, determined to be the one to speak to the newly returned Robin if Bruce was more content to type away at the computer, "are there any young ladies you're currently seeing?"

"_No_," Robin returned flatly as he ascended the stairwell.

"Master Dick," And there was a detectable amount of sternness in that British accent, "I have raised enough boys in my lifetime to know that "No" spoken with _that_ infliction to _that_ question is most certainly a lie."

"Good _night_, Alfred."

The boy disappeared behind the pull-away grandfather clock of the upstairs and Alfred allowed himself a sly little smile.


	3. Chapter 3

Thanks for the feedback Thiefy17 and Maei13! You guys rock! I'm going to be away on a trip 06/06 through 06/14 so pretty please review and tell me what you think. If you like this story and want it updated faster reviews are the only way to go!

Arual-san

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Everything was accounted for. Robin had gone past the empty halls of Wayne Manor to his old room to find it the exact same as he'd left it, literally, there was no dust at all. Alfred must have dusted that room regularly in hopes of the boy returning one day. The boy changed into his pajamas and he added to his suitcase the things he'd need for his return to Birnamwood Academy.

He'd made sure to do everything else before he went to the mirror.

His uniform of red, green and yellow was of a versatile design: it adjusted to fit him and not the other way around, it didn't stretch or shrink in the wash and it insulated body heat for those cold night runs on the rooftops of Jump. Being a boy he figured that these were all useful qualities in any right and he needn't bother ever wearing anything else.

If the loose-fitting sleeves of the pajamas felt a little strange…but no, he'd have to get it over with eventually, it might as well be now.

Robin's fingers traced over his temples. He hesitated but then started peeling back the mask he kept on with a special kind of glue. The marks that it left behind would be gone by morning and he could only hope that small amount of covered skin wasn't too pale against the rest of his face that had consistent exposure to sunlight.

Brilliant blue eyes stared back at him through the mirror and with that final piece removed he wasn't Robin anymore, just Dick Grayson.

The morning that followed made Dick feel even less like himself in that, along with being without his mask, he had to spend all too much time getting dressed up: buttoned up long-sleeve shirt, navy blue blazer with the school's insignia, a belt that no utility features to speak of and pinchy black dress shoes but like the night before he'd saved the worst for last – the fine-toothed comb.

"I _hate_ you," he growled to the little plastic thing like it had done him a great personal wrong.

Several brushes to his rebellious black hair later and it lay perfectly flat against his skull. He'd only just gotten rid of Robin but looking in the mirror he wondered if Dick Grayson was even still there anymore either or if the boy staring back was the same pampered heir to a great fortune that all the other students at the academy were.

"Well now," a voice drifted into the washroom, pleased for the change, "don't you look every bit the young gentleman, Master Richard."

Alfred placed his hands over the boy's shoulders as though beaming over a grandson he could show off to his old lady friends, quite overlooking the way Dick glared at the mirror in loathing as if to shatter it by sheer force of mind.

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Stories below the part of mansion the rest of the world saw Bruce Wayne's dark eyes never left the flashing screen of the Batcave's supercomputer. Files of Renwei and Birnamwood overlapped one after the other as he strived to uncover any overlooked information to assist Robin in his mission, whether the boy wanted it or not. He'd been in the middle of the same thing last night, not getting to bed until three, back to work again at eight.

The exact place where the teleportation device had been activated had been in the track field, surely a mistake and one that would cost the perpetrator dearly. Just what the alien enterprise was smuggling he had yet to find out.

There was little that could disrupt Wayne's disciplined focus. The sudden high pitched shrieking from high above was one of them.

He looked up from his work expecting to see a couple of male bats fighting over a female but he was on his feet at once when he saw that the commotion was over a green bat that seemed to have startled itself awake. Had Poison Ivy the mind to develop a strange new hybrid?

"_That's_ a new one," Wayne commented as he flipped a switch.

The little green bat's startling bubbled up to panic when the opening of the cave sealed off with unforgiving steel plates. It woke up all the other bats with its shrieking and soon enough the space above was a thick cloud of bats fighting and biting with that contagious panic.

Even if the green bat was radioactive or sprouted some kind of thorny appendages the fifty other bats Wayne was sure would keep it busy and they did as he opened a cabinet full of different types of weapons. He traced over Batarangs and smoke bombs before he found the more specialized weapon he was looking for.

Amidst trying to defend itself against the winged fury in the air, the green bat was the only one to notice when the man below walked to the edge of a cliffside, took aim a wide-mouthed gun at the swarm. A flicker of understanding shone in those beady eyes and with a squeak it tried to cut through its normal siblings and get far away.

Wayne set up a shot and fired. It wasn't however a bullet that came out of the barrel but a spring-loaded net that whooshed over at least twenty of the bats, trapping them like an octopus traps its prey. The green one had managed to evade that first shot but Wayne was not discouraged. The rope attached to the net reeled in its catch which the man caught and set at his feet.

He loaded a second shot.

"Got you!" he said with a little excitement as if he'd caught the prize fish in a lake when the trap closed over the green and several of its kin.

He opened the first bag of bats and they took off at once through the newly opened skylight, probably never to return. The netting might have been thick enough so that he didn't suffer any bites on the outside but Wayne fetched a glove from his suit for the next step. He opened the second bag the smallest bit he could, reached in to grab a bat.

His hand resurfaced with three brown ones sinking their teeth into the glove's tough material and he flicked it to send them off. He'd only started to reach in again when the bag suddenly bulged and expanded so rapidly that it burst apart like a ball of confetti.

"What in the-?" Wayne started in surprise. He fell back to retrieve a better weapon.

A green deer momentarily took the place of the green bat before it morphed again into a green-skinned boy who swiped and thrashed on the ground to fend off the crazed bats.

"Oww! _OWW! Stop biting me!_" Beast Boy yelled. "Stupid bats! Leave me alone!"

The bats wouldn't have been so keen to fight a predator so that was exactly what Beast Boy turned himself into next: a raging tiger. He roared viciously and swiped at the flying mammals until they were frightened enough to retreat.

Beast Boy gave them another departing roar as if saying "Yeah, you'd _better_ run!" but when he turned around to the imposing figure now approaching him with a real weapon the changeling lost all courage and transformed into a tiny kitten so fast he dropped to the ground like a stone.

He turned those big doe-eyes up, up, up, trying to get off scott-free through cuteness.

"Meow?" he tried nervously, hoping against hope.

Wayne's freeze ray was pulled on him all the same. One pull to the trigger and he'd be a kitty popsicle.

"Transform back to human, shapeshifter!"

Beast Boy didn't need to be told twice by a man so intimidating by himself that he never needed a mask.

"Who are you and what is your business here!?"

"Uuuhh…" the poor boy stuttered as the barrel stared him down, "I…I-I…J-Jump City…f-f-flew…I-"

"You're going to have to do better than that!"

"Oh, what's this now?" came a new voice, Alfred's, newly returned from dropping off Dick. "A new visitor, sir?"

"R-Robin!" Beast Boy suddenly burst out now that a friendlier voice had broken up the harsher one. "I'm one of Robin's teammates back in Jump City! It's Beast Boy and I'm here to be his backup!"

"Oh _really?_" Wayne came back, unconvinced with his long experience with criminals. "Why don't you prove it?"

The man couldn't have asked a more difficult question on one of the most secret prone Titans in the tower but at gun-point Beast Boy had no other choice. What did he know about Robin that the both of them would know to be true?

"Uh, uh, he's always way too serious and he's a total freak about his detective work!"

"Any two bit criminal could tell me the same!"

"He studied martial arts with the True Master over in Asia!"

"Easily found out with research!"

"He – he-" Beast Boy stuttered, feeling that he was fast running out of options, "he hates tofu and will never touch anything I cook!"

That one was just a little too bizarre for the two men and they exchanged dubious expressions. Wayne released the safety hold on the gun, signaling he was through playing games. Freezing a shapeshifter was one of the few ways to contain one without it slipping away through the tiniest crack.

"Oh come on! Don't you know the Doom Patrol or anything?" Beast Boy threw out as a last resort. "I used to be a part of their team, I-!" But just as Wayne had been about to pulled the trigger Beast Boy came up with the one thing that would erase all doubt.

"There's a photo!" he exclaimed. "A photo in Robin's room – the circus, acrobats, the uh – uh, Flying Graysons!"

Wayne remained frozen in his same ready to shoot pose but he soon withdrew. "That'll do, kid."

The sigh of relief Beast Boy gave couldn't have been greater had he been in the form of an elephant and had their great lung capacity. Now that it was clear that the boy was no threat Alfred was quick to get the rubbing alcohol to disinfect the boy's many bat bites.

"I assume you came here out of your own volition?" Wayne asked though he was sure he knew the answer.

"Eh-heh…_maybe_," he said most sheepishly. "I woke up too late to carpool with him, didn't I?"

"Indeed you did, young man," Alfred commented mildly as he swabbed a particularly nasty cut on the boy's shoulder. The boy squeaked in pain and tried to pull away in instinct but Alfred steadied him in place with long practice and continued. "I fail to see how that is relevant though. It's not as if you could provide the backup Robin requires looking…" – he tried for sensitivity – "the _way_ you do."

"Oh, the green thing? Got it covered!" Beast Boy, excited for a long time for this, drew back hands that each bore a metal ring and pushed them back into the other.

A flash of light spread over him the same length and width of his body and Alfred stood back at the spectacle. Peachy skin washed over the green and green hair turned into a chestnut brown. Even his pointed ears and teeth rounded out so that he had the appearance of a normal boy.

The Batman took the sight with a grain of salt. It was strange, yes, but not the strangest thing he had ever seen.

"I suppose I can forge a few documents into the computer."

"Awesome, sir!"

"Not a problem," Wayne waved off, "so long as you don't refer to me as 'sir' again, Beast Boy."

"And…um…Batman?"

"Yes?" the man asked, turning.

Stars replaced Beast Boy's eyes and they twinkled in awe and admiration as if he was in the presence of a higher being. "C-can I have your autograph?"

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Ha ha! BB's just a fanboy to the very end, isn't he? Please Read and Review!


	4. Chapter 4

So weird, my chapter four's always seem to be the funniest ones and this is the third time counting if you've happened to have read From Solo to Trio and Return to the Swamp. Have fun with this one, Robin, and learn to laugh at yourself!

Arual-san

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Alfred maintained the same quiet dignity as he always did when he had to make the exact same drive back to the place he had already just been when all the while the teenager behind him was positively jumping off the walls in the Rolls Royce to either side window, not wanting to miss a thing, when he flipped the dials so the separating window went up and down, never getting bored of that simple thing.

Since the police of Jump City were a massive fail except to the least worthy of super-villains the Titans' patrol of it was a full time job that meant trips away from it were few and far in between. Beast Boy had souvenirs of Tokyo sure but with every passing day his memories of it became a little less clear cut. The adoring faces of his karaoke fans he was sorest to lose…even when they had all turned into crazed stalkers when he'd tried to get some air.

But this was a brand new and additionally famous city that he was in now. The sights of how the concrete jungle of Gotham dwarfed their little Jump, the sounds of beeping cars, newspaper vendors yelling out the recent incarceration of whatever supervillian, the smell of…

Beast Boy ducked in his head in with a rush, coughing and wheezing after getting a face full of exhaust from the malfunctioning car in front.

"Seatbelts please, young man," the old butler put mildly, rounding a corner.

"Yeah, yeah, okay," Beast Boy said in a rush, buckling it, but still that small strap barely kept him contained, especially when the car rolled up to the front gates of his new mission. "Geez, where's the queen? I don't have a hat to take off!"

Credentials were given when asked for and Beast Boy was so stuck just gawking at the illustrious academy and its many wings that he almost didn't notice when they came to a stop in the visitor's parking. He flew out the door like a lit firecracker until he realized that although his feet whirred in motion he hadn't gone more than a foot from the car.

He looked round to see Alfred holding back his blazer with one hand, holding up his book bag with the other.

"Oh yeah!" With the rapid reflexes of an animal, Beast Boy snaked his arms through the bag's straps and started off again…only to find himself still held in place. The boy's over the top enthusiasm was a bit tiring to the old man but nonetheless Alfred could not let the boy out of his sight without properly preparing him with his room number, key and class schedule, matched as close as could be with his teammate's.

"One more thing," Alfred said, turning him around. He gripped the boy's tie, tightened its knot so that it might've been a noose.

Beast Boy hacked. "But you tightened it _before_ we left!"

"Yes and you somehow managed to loosen it up again," Alfred replied, plenty used to the sass of a teenager. "If the decision had been up to me, young man, I would have run you through a rigorous training regimen of proper etiquette."

"Oh, what's to know?" Beast Boy asked, blowing a raspberry. "To be a rich person all you have to do is _act_ boring and _talk_ boring and drink tea with your pinky finger out."

Alfred's eyelids drooped low in doubt. "Quite." He released the boy's tie with some hesitation, had to remind him to stop tearing down the path like a maniac when other students would be on it further down the line.

The old man looked after the boy for some time and the lines of doubt remained creased in his forehead over the small nagging question of whether he'd set off on its way a helping hand or a hindrance. That alone was for Robin to decide.

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Dick need not have worried about concealing the miserable expression on his face as he walked the halls for third period, for many of the other students bore the same expression. He'd made a point of memorizing the rules the last he'd been there but still his wrists burned slightly pink for the couple times he'd slipped up and gotten whipped. The officials here lived to enforce authority and no parent was against a little discipline for the sons that would take up the family legacy.

He wasn't entirely sure what it was he was looking for, just for anything at all suspicious. It was that wandering attention that had earned Dick those two slaps to his wrists during class but when he was walking the halls he was free to inspect the behavior of classmates and professors.

Professors had the habit of complaining about how their income wasn't as high as it could be with the wealth of their clients as he passed the teacher's lounge. The majority of the students probably wouldn't receive the full amount of their inheritances until they became of age. A number of them might've signed up just for the thrill of it when they lived such strict and sheltered lives.

Everyone Dick passed was a potential suspect as an operative in Renwei's black market. The question was who to probe and to what extent to avoid suspicion when he moved on to the next potential. Bruce did the same sort of undercover work in the back alleys of Gotham but just because Dick was in a prestigious school didn't mean he could afford to take his mission any less seriously. Adults had the habit of underestimating how truly nasty kids could be…even if they didn't have the hidden switchblade of the common thug.

Because of his age and that alone, Dick hadn't much experience taking on an undercover assignment. Bruce couldn't just say he was bringing along his son to show him the tricks of the street without raising a few eyebrows.

"Not a problem," he murmured under his breath when just thinking those thoughts he expected the communicator in his pack to start vibrating with Batman filling him in on new information, always thinking it was his place to keep the boy under his wing.

Dick had been prepared and had removed the batteries. This was _his_ mission, no matter that Batgirl and Batman were the ones to initially discover it. He wasn't going to stop pushing the fact that he was a capable and independent hero until the point got through the Bat's thick skull, until his guardian stopped looking at him like he was that lonely little eight-year-old brought in from the circus a whole other life ago.

This mission was another way to prove himself and one that the Bat couldn't overlook when Dick was right under his eye.

It was that drive that had kept him going through the day and he refocused on the other boys he passed, brushing by with little notice, picking up tidbits of conversation before he selected one with which to mingle.

He wasn't there to make friends or reestablish relations with former ones. He just had the fake them convincingly enough.

"Father's stocks are through the roof," a sandy-haired boy bragged, his arms crossed smugly. "I suppose I'll get an upgrade soon from that trashy Ferrari I rear-ended last week."

"It's really not that large of a dent," commented another thoughtfully. "Easily fixed with a vacuum suction and a little paint."

The reply would have been a perfectly reasonable solution to a fender bender in a normal school but it was a joke and a fine one at that in this school. The boys only allowed themselves a few dignified chuckles but it annoyed Dick all the same and he passed that chatter that was the norm.

Dick passed by a couple other similar conceited conversations until he neared his next classroom.

When he passed by a pale young gentleman raised his head from his friends to give a scrutinizing stare his way. He nudged a friend, abruptly ending all previous conversation. "It appears the Wayne heir has returned from his study abroad."

"_Heir?_" a boy scoffed as if it was funnier than the Ferrari dilemma could ever be. "You mean he's _not_ just some lowly orphan Wayne picked up from the streets? The _actual_ Wayne bloodline flows through his veins?"

"I suppose the remaining Wayne would have no other choice to pick up some street urchin to pass his fortune down to…"

"Seeing as no woman would ever want to marry a living, breathing statue."

The chuckles started again like they had before every day of the single year he had spent in this academy. It was a joke that always seemed new to the soft-faced, spoiled heirs he'd come to despise and it didn't help that the adults seemed to agree that he wasn't worthy in not being a blood relation even if they couldn't voice aloud those thoughts.

Oh if the black market accomplices could be every single boy who had ever spoken ill of him and his guardian.

_Then_ – he pummeled a fist into his hand – he could treat them like any other villain.

Dick made sure to arrive to his history class a few minutes early since in the previous period an over eager disciplinarian professor had handed out tardy wrist lashings at least fifteen seconds before the bell had rung.

He decided to direct his attention to a group a few spaces from him and so he hardly noticed when the next boy that came in walked past three rows to sit right next to him.

Class droned on like the two before it and Dick was pulled away from his observation much too soon. He had to keep his eyes focused up front and no where else, not for a second, his stinging wrists reminded him.

It became more difficult to do when his left ear picked up the almost undetectable sound of a snicker stifled behind a pair of bit lips. So yet another person was laughing at him. Great. All the more reason to get the mission over with faster.

He would've just ignored it like he ignored all the other taunts but the random, stifled snickering didn't seem to stop even ten minutes in. That was highly suspicious in itself what with the strict upbringing of the other students.

But Dick couldn't look away from the blackboard and the professor, not for an instant, for that would be the instant he would be caught.

Since he'd dropped in during the middle of the term the history professor decided to load him down with homework at the end of class, which was most likely to happen with every class he went to that day and hinder progress from his true objective. Third period had only just ended and yet the academy was already doing everything it could to remind him why he'd never wanted to come back.

He heard another snicker from behind his back. Now that boy from the neighboring desk was following him in the halls.

That was it, his first lead to pursue. If that boy wanted to follow him than Dick let him do so at a brisker pace so that they made it to a corner of the west wing that was always all but deserted at that time of the day.

Once they were as close to alone as they were going to get, Dick spun on the spot.

"All right, why are you-!?" But Dick choked on his words mid-sentence, startled back on his feet on seeing Beast Boy in a perfectly passable human form.

Beast Boy positively beamed that he'd been noticed at long last. "Hi Ro-!"

A hundred blaring alarms screamed inside Dick's head in incredulity, at the other boy's sheer stupidity, and he clamped his hands over Beast Boy's like lightning to keep him from uttering that one word that was his secret identity.

"_You-! I-! What are you-!?_" he started, completing none of his sentences and he had the feeling Beast Boy was grinning behind his covered mouth. Dick released him to avoid suspicion from the few people passing through but was no less calm.

"_What_ are you…"

"_Doing_ here?" Beast Boy supplied all too happily, scratching his head. "Eh…wrong turn at Albuquerque?"

Not pleased, Dick crossed his arms, waiting.

"Simple. You forgot about _this_ little guy." And Beast Boy raised a hand to show his leader one half of the same holographic generator rings that had allowed Cyborg to infiltrate the Hive Academy. "I couldn't pass up such a great opportunity!"

Both boys looked to the insignificant ring with the very significant powers, one with praise, one with loathing like he'd wished he'd buried it away with all the other crime-fighting memorabilia in the basement where no mischievous green hands could ever find it.

"You see, the girls couldn't come and Cy would kind of stand out anyway with that big quarterback build so I thought _I'd_ keep you company. Two heads are better than one!"

"_Right_," Dick droned with dry sarcasm. He was _sure_ it had _nothing_ to do with Beast Boy meeting his hero Batman and getting to fool around with some advanced technology he'd probably end up breaking.

It only took that second of thinking about Beast Boy's motives before Beast Boy was leaning in much too close with a wickedly wide grin, breaching all sense of personal space.

Staring directly into his eyes.

"_Stop_ it!" Dick hissed through his teeth. It was creeping him out in no small way.

"So you _do_ have _eyes!_" Beast Boy exclaimed like it was the discovery of the century. "And they're _blue!_ Puts those other theories to rest that you have cybernetic night-vision implants or that you've got such an oversensitivity to the sun that they'd explode in their sockets!"

Dick's teeth not only remained clenched, they grated audibly. Just then he couldn't help but notice Beast Boy's unusual positioning. "Why do you have a hand behind your back? Show it to me."

"You're the leader," Beast Boy said with obedience, revealing that hand but only after he'd replaced it with his other.

"_What_ do have behind your back?"

"Just a ring on each finger," he replied a little too innocently. "You saw the first ring and you saw its brother, I don't see why-" But Beast Boy cut himself off right there, whipped out the camera and snapped a shot of Robin's bare face just as swiftly as he could.

Dick cried out in alarm from the glare and Beast Boy seized the opportunity to high-tail it out of there.

"_Ha ha ha! _That two-hundred buck pot is _MINE!_"

Spots danced in his vision but Dick lowered his hand at that exclamation and he would wholly believe someone just then if they had said that steam was coming out of his ears. He didn't run after and he didn't need to bother.

Beast Boy raced down the halls with glee like the money was already in his hands after so long awaiting the opportunity to strike. He didn't know where he was headed, just that he had to get as far away from the west wing as possible and so he took turns and double-backs without a thought.

He found a restroom and pushed past the door all so that he could get a first glimpse of his prize…

When Robin himself laid waiting on the other side with red burning in his newly discovered blue eyes. He shut the door with force before it had the chance to shut itself.

"_Du-uuude!_" Beast Boy whined and he was always fully taken by surprise by his leader's uncanny tricks. "How _do_ you do that!? You were _way_ behind me and I passed like thirty empty rooms!"

"Just the same as tracking any other _prey_."

"Heh-heh…" But Beast Boy was jolted right off track from getting nervous when he saw a glimpse of how his prize photo had developed. He gave a long, wailing moan. "Man, your eyes are all squinty! The other titans will think I photo-shopped it! Hold still!" He snapped away photo after photo to Dick's increasing resentment, not reading the tell-tale warning sign of the Titan leader beginning to bristle. "Would it _kill_ you to _smile!?_ I thought they'd up the bounty if I caught you in some stuffy uniform with Mama's boy hair but they might lower it if you're all grumpy and-!"

Dick lost all composure and lunged. "_Give me that!_"

"_Eeep!_" Beast Boy squealed, ducking out of the way and shielding his precious camera. "Wha-? _NO! _It's _my_ picture and _my_ camera and I got it fair and square! You don't know how long the rest of us have been waiting _get_ this, _both_ East and West!"

"Give it!" But despite Dick's sharply honed skills of martial arts the camera only just slipped out of his reach again and again with Beast Boy's own slippery movements of having been in the forms of so many different kinds of animals.

"Cyborg started the pot if we _ever_ got a shot of your face!" Beast Boy said, unveiling the long-kept secret at last. "We've been keeping it in a pillowcase in Cy's closet and keep adding to it whenever we get the urge to see you without the mask, even _Raven's_ pitched in a couple times! Then we got the Titans East in on it too and it _really_ took over!"

Dick finally managed to wring in the camera by its dangling strap and soon he had half of it, which compromised Beast Boy's cockiness considerably.

"Hand it over! _My_ alter-ego is _mine!_"

"But my moped needs a new _everything!_" Beast Boy argued, pulling back. "Come on, my baby needs some love!"

"You can change into _anything! _You don't _need_ any wheels, you're just lazy!"

The boys pulled back forth, straining and throwing insults, trying to throw the other off balance all for the little black camera between them, quite overlooking the sound of the fourth period bell ringing. It went on for a while despite the camera's smooth surface until in their pivoting across the floor that Beast Boy came across a splash of water and slipped. It felled them both but Dick took the main brunt of the fall and Beast Boy snatched the opportunity to grab his camera and act like he'd meant to slip all along.

Dick picked himself up from the floor but instead of reinstating the fight let out a mix between a growl and a sigh.

"Can you just _go home_ if I let you keep the stupid picture?"

"Go home?" Beast Boy repeated as if he hadn't heard right.

"Yes. I really don't think…you're the one best suited for this mission." Truth be told, Dick quite thought that Beast Boy was the one _least_ suited to the mission and for obvious reasons.

"Well I'm here, I'm enrolled and I'm staying and that's that." Beast Boy had decided that for the both of them after he'd spent hours looking for the rings and braving the cold wind of the high altitude flying. "Oh and while I'm here I'm your third cousin so don't forget it."

"And _you_ had better not forget that you can _never_ call me Robin on this campus."

"Uhhh, _oookay_…uhh…" Beast Boy kept trailing on, giving his friend the time to fill him in on any sort of clue, "fearless leader?"

Dick sighed and looked away. "It's Richard."

"Really? Sounds so kingly. _Sooo_…Richie?" he branched out hopefully.

"Only if you want my textbook as your tombstone," Dick replied, forebodingly holding out his physics book. He wouldn't allow Beast Boy to waste anymore of his time with a proper funeral. "Call me Dick."

Beast Boy scratched his head. "How is Dick a nickname for Richard anyway?"

"I don't know, it just _is_." And for the first time since he'd arrived at the academy that day some of Dick's old spirit had returned. "And I wouldn't be taking cracks at _my_ name anyway, _Garfield_."

"_Hey!_" Beast Boy came back at once, plenty used to having to defend his real name. "My name has a rich English history and it was the last name of one of our own U.S. presidents! Why does everyone only ever think of that blasted cat!? He's not even that funny!"

"Because you're kindred spirits in that way," Dick replied, just as ready with reply.

Beast Boy's head sunk low with an old sourness brought into the open again but he perked up out of it just as fast when they were out on a new adventure, just him and Robin. "Gotcha, uh…Dick. I'll be on my best behavior."

"I'll hold you to that, Gar. We're old-schooling this one, meaning our secret identities remain secret 24/7, no exceptions." He'd laid the ground rules which Beast Boy was sure to follow if he didn't want to fly all the way home but there was one last thing that needed resolving.

Beast Boy sputtered as his tie was re-tightened to choking levels once again that morning.


	5. Chapter 5

If you insist Korand'r. :) Enjoy everyone and don't forget to review!

Arual-san

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Door after door slid open to Starfire's pressure signature as she searched the tower from rooftop to the dark murky cellar that frightened her still after the aftermath of Raven's refusal to admit her fear after watching Wicked Scary. She'd thoroughly checked Beast Boy's room down to the last insect-infected candy bar in his closet and the horror of clutter under his bed until there was no doubt he was not there.

"Cyborg," she said in concern, drifting through into the den, "have you seen Beast Boy?"

"Wha-!?" the mechanical titan blurted out in a rush, much too involved in racing his car over the big screen. Neither of his normal gaming buddies was present so he was matched up against Silkie for the goal.

The little moth larvae had watched the boys obsess over the gaming platform, watched them play it so many times with its genetically enhanced mind that it now danced across the controller head and head with Cyborg and burbling with delight.

"Beast Boy!" Starfire repeated with a shout, used to the wall she had to get through with the console.

"BB? Wasn't he going out to get a pizza?"

"Yes, friend, but I fear that the errand was over twelve of your earth hours ago."

"Well you know that B still gets lost in our own city and-" Cyborg started, only with an eighth of his divided attention, but he then yanked his controller round in the air as if controlling a real car. "You are _not_ pulling that weak junk with me, little man! This trophy is _mine!_"

Each of Silkie's six appendages was at a button or the control stick. He was ready at all times to mash the right button, make the right turn, when Cyborg had to spend several half seconds adjusting his thumbs.

"I am _NOT_ losing to some _bug!_"

So long as Cyborg's hands were glued to the controller and his eyes glued to the screen he was a slave to the game and so Starfire moved on to the only other available titan.

"Raven?" Starfire asked in a tiny voice, peeking through her door.

The macabre girl was predictably hovering cross-legged in mid-air, deep as the ocean in meditation. As often as she did so though, Raven had learned from long experience that in the tower her sessions were always doomed to a premature end.

She cracked an eye open in irritation. "What?"

"I cannot find Beast Boy anywhere. Might you know in which direction he has wandered off?"

"No."

"I am beginning to feel the concern for his whereabouts. Too much time has passed for him to still be retrieving the pizza."

"Then _maybe_ Beast Boy just didn't head to the pizza place down the street." Raven ended her session, got to her feet in that it was something she couldn't avoid. "_Maybe_ he thought he'd give us all a well-deserved _break_ from him and went _far_ away."

"Far away to retrieve the pizza?"

"_Yes_, Starfire," Raven said wearily, what little emotion she had deflating from voice. "Everybody knows that the best pizza in the continent grows from the pizza trees in Fayette, Utah. The line backs up all the way to Salt Lake City."

"And that is why he is taking so very long?"

"Yes."

"Really it is?"

"No." Raven strode briskly across the room to where her communicator lay. She'd set it to mute during her session but no surprise appeared on her ashen face when there were no messages. "Since I realized Beast Boy was missing I've been attempting to contact both him and Robin once every hour or so. Robin's communicator has been disconnected and Beast Boy is simply refusing to answer his but I think it's fairly obvious where he's gone."

Violet eyes slanted over to green ones.

Raven stabbed the green button that was Beast Boy's line as if it was his face. He couldn't ignore her and the chewing out he deserved forever.

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"Wrists," Dick said blandly to his partner as they approached the doors to their fourth period literature class.

"What?"

"Hold out your wrists."

"Err okay," Gar replied, not entirely sure why but obeying all the same. The teachings had come to a halt, all attention of the students was turned to them but Gar only realized the reason when the professor's leather strip lashed over their exposed skin.

More than prepared for Gar to cry out, Dick stomped on his foot, silencing the cry to no more than a second long.

"If Mr. Grayson and," the professor paused to find the name of his new student on his list, "Mr. Logan are finished wasting everyone's time might I begin again with the lesson? If it isn't too much trouble, boys?"

"Please continue, Professor Worthington," Dick answered promptly, nodding his head in respects. "Thank you."

Had he been allowed to be freer with his expressions, Gar certainly would have gawked in that his teammate had actually just _thanked_ someone for punishing him. Dick however was the more knowledgeable one there and Gar followed his lead with a complementing nod.

The way Dick had explained it was that they had to be multi-tasking at all times. The classroom itself was silent save for the professor reading through a chapter of War and Peace but in that he was walking through the rows as he read left the two free to examine their classmates, looking for small ticks that might give them away – shaking, nervousness, looking at watches, though any of these signs could easily be the same for a test next period. Classroom time was basically next to useless but, as Gar had said before, the Titan leader was a freak with his detective work.

Though Dick was so focused on the unlikely task Gar soon became bored, both with the boring text and wondering if the boy fiddling with his Rolex was in actuality was setting up an explosive device as his paranoid leader would want him to believe.

The leather strip came down hard on Gar's back, making him squeal.

"Straight back, Mr. Logan!" the professor scolded but he transitioned back to the book so smoothly that the scolding could have been part of it.

The other boys weren't permitted to laugh but still some of their eyes glittered, a certain kind of delight that someone else was being punished and not them. Dick turned a page in his book, signaling his friend to ignore his aching back and do the same.

Lunchtime rolled around and it was the break the boys had been waiting for.

"Is someone waiting to whip me for using the wrong fork?" Gar asked with some ill humor as he stabbed his side of beef and shook it off onto Dick's tray. Dick transferred his Brussels sprouts to Gar with the same distaste.

"Not since the last time I was here," Dick sighed, taking a bite of mashed potatoes, "but I wouldn't hold your breath." He headed off a would-be complaint from his partner by asking if he'd noticed anything suspicious.

"Suspicious? Suspicious like that guy that scratched his neck _three_ times?"

"It could have been a signal to another student of a secret meeting."

"_Or_ he could have just had an itchy neck!"

"Subtlety isn't your style, I know." Dick knew that well when even now Gar was unconsciously jiggling his leg madly with pent up energy and frustration. "But this is a large school and we have to be on guard to everyone in it. We won't always have the most ideal circumstances to observe them in."

"Observe _what?_" Gar wanted to know. He popped in a sprout but for his lip he found himself jerked up by the arm from the table.

Once they vacated their spots were filled almost instantaneously to Gar's discontent. They'd spent a good twenty minutes getting through that slow moving lunch line and from what he could see there were no other empty spaces for two to be seen in the crowded mess hall.

Dick selected a particular place where two boys were already sitting.

"Move."

Gar took that it in with great surprise for the gall and the two boys reacted similarly, about to retort, until they turned to see who had spoken. They both snapped their mouths shut and moved away to find another spot.

Gar was even more surprised. "_How_ did you-?"

"Sit _down_, Garfield." His teammate obeyed as Dick knew he would in being spoken to in that quietly commanding tone and so his attention was free to be focused on the three muscular built boys before him. "Chad, Bradley, Regis, _nice_ to see you again."

"Who's the shrimp, Grayson?" the blond jock asked in an unfriendly welcome.

"Distant cousin, Bradley," Dick replied, never wavering in his false cheer in reuniting with his old classmates. "Have I missed anything in the time I've been studying over in France? Any new rules, regimens…_exchanges?_"

"Why are you so keen to know?"

Though no one had confirmed the same Gar was pretty certain that the boys Dick was exchanging conversation with had a rather large influence in the student body. He was surprised that they, little more than strangers, had been allowed to sit, shocked that they'd been allowed to stay.

"Just showing my cousin the ropes of the place," Dick said as if he didn't care when he really did. "Looking for a little fun while I'm back."

"There _might_ be a few things going on here and there."

"Then I'm interested."

"We'll consider it, Grayson," said Regis, the boy who appeared to be the leader, deciding for the whole of his friends without consulting them first.

"That's all I ask." But with Dick's satisfied tone he was sure he had already won. Later, when the boys had a moment to themselves, Gar couldn't keep it in any longer and had to ask how Dick had managed to do what he did when they were always hearing derogatory whispers about him in the halls.

"All they'll do is whisper," Dick explained. "Bruce Wayne is the richest, most influential man in this city and so even if I'm his ward and not his son his head is higher up on the corporate food chain than anyone else's dad. They may think I'm unworthy and replaceable but this still holds true."

Gar walked alongside him, nodding, but the whispers still bothered him no less.

"If you know how to work the school's system it really isn't about bloodline at all."

Seeing where it was going, Gar nodded again. "Power." They reached the fork in the hallway and Gar parted from his friend with a wave. Their last three classes were to be spent solo.

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Twenty minutes past the final bell of the day and Gar trudged into the two bunk box that was their dorm room. His posture was low and heavy like a gorilla carrying a two-ton anvil on its back and his face was flat with tired anger.

"Looks like you had about as great of a day as I've had." Dick was still in the midst of unpacking and situating everything to his liking but he found the time to toss his friend a bottle of aloe vera that was a staple among every student in attendance.

His expression never wavering, Gar clapped his hands over the bottle, continued dragging himself inside.

"Damage doesn't look too bad from here," Dick commented lightly for all the times his friend had tried to pull him and the others from foul moods.

The comment did pull Gar from his gloom but not in the way Dick expected as Gar jerked his head to a side, very obviously gesturing the words 'You think?'. He tossed his bag onto the top bunk and he turned over his arms to show stinging red wrists.

But he didn't stop there. Next Gar unbuttoned his blazer sleeves to reveal that the same red covered the rest of his skin up to his elbows and Dick could only stop what he was doing and stare in disbelief.

"They ran out of _room_."

"Beast Boy," Dick deadpanned, looking on the abused arms, "that's at least a _week's_ worth of lashings for the average student. What did you _do?_"

"Let's see," Gar started up with fake enthusiasm, ticking off the list, "bad posture, loose tie knot, divided attention span, _short_ attention span, picking at my teeth, being on the wrong page, forgetting to turn off my communicator and giving a lot of wrong answers."

"Anything _else?_"

"Also drew the teacher with horns, laughing over a pit of fire."

"Smart. _Real_ smart."

The growl of utter frustration Gar gave would've made his more fierce animal forms proud of the scrawny human. "I _hate_ this place! Can't we just be stuck in Mad Mod's crazy school? At least _then_ we could kick his bony butt at the end of the day!"

"You should have figured out that this wasn't going to be fun by how _I_ was acting like it wasn't going to be fun."

"Yeah, well why didn't you take some responsibility and order me not to come?"

"Are you really trying to blame this on me? _Really?_"

"I, uh…_no_," Gar sighed, resigned. Now that there was no looming threat of a dreaded leather strap, Gar vented his frustrations by tossing out the contents of his book bag and the suitcase stashed away in the T-Ship, not caring where they fell.

His communicator fell out from somewhere in the mess.

"You have ten missed calls," chimed an electronic female voice but after it said 'from' the voice changed from perky to a croaky drawl: "Raven."

Gar pounced over the condemning thing at once trying to silence it but the damage had been done.

"_Answer_ her," Dick ordered him in a no nonsense tone.

"But – but Raven's going to bite my head off! Just like those Praying Mantis bugs, she'll-!"

Not about to sit around and listen to the other boy whine, Dick snapped the communicator away from him and punched in the tiny purple button that was Raven's line. He shoved it back to Gar but it could've been a hot potato the way the poor boy handled it.

"Off button! Off button!" Gar scrambled for it before she could pick up but the screen flashed to life after only two rings.

The girl on the other line of the line radiated with concealed anger. Her head was bowed so her face was in half shadows, an extra step of intimidation unneeded when the back of Gar's neck was already prickling in fear.

"H-h-hi Raven!" Gar stuttered, trying to latch hold of some of his normal cheer. "You look _really_ pretty today. New forehead gem thingy?"

"You left me waiting," she said forebodingly.

"Uh yeah, well, the _craziest_ stuff has been happening over here with Robin! Busy, busy, busy, couldn't call! You see, there was this uh, uh," – he stumbled back over all the villains he knew of in Gotham City – "clay! It was Clayface and he was attacking the academy and – and my communicator got whacked out of my hand by a lump of clay and I had to dig through all this muck to find it and-!"

"I called you when Robin was still in the jet as well."

"You – you did!? Must have been a communications inference with all the planes flying overhead!"

"And those two things alone spanned _fifteen_ hours?"

"W-well I couldn't answer during class a-and Robin and I have been doing all this heavy-duty detective work and – we've been _way_ too busy with the mission haven't we, Robin? _Way_ too busy!"

"No," Dick responded plainly from one of the laptops. "He just didn't want to talk to you, Raven."

Gar yelped like he'd been given a death sentence with those words and he was reduced to unintelligible stuttering in the face of Raven's expression sinking to its darkest depths yet, black energy flowing off her like a miniature sun.

"Y-you don't _own_ me!" Gar stammered in a desperate attempt to grasp some courage. "I don't have to answer if I don't-!"

The dark energy spread to Raven's eyes and Gar jumped, his communicator starting shaking violently and he couldn't tell if it was from his shaking or from Raven trying to punish him from thousands of miles away.

"_Don't_. Let. It. Happen. _Again_."

"_Y-y-yes, Raven!_" Gar said in terror. "Not letting it happen again, not ever. I'll answer right away okay? Before even the second ring goes off." Just as soon as Raven nodded, accepting his apology and permitting him to leave, did Gar hang up immediately, falling to his knees to the floor in relief.

"Wa-cha!" commented Dick, simulating a whip crack with his hand.

"_Shut up!"_ Gar fired back instantly, a nerve pulsing on his forehead.

"You know, normally you have to actually be _dating_ the girl to be whipped so hard."

"Well Raven's scary!" Gar retorted and anyone who knew dark side of the already dark girl would agree. "I really thought that freaky dark energy of hers was going to leak out of the communicator and swallow me whole!"

"Who's to say she won't change her mind?"

The mere thought of that now implanted in his head, the communicator again was a hot potato and Gar released it at once.

"Thanks for backing me up! Some bro _you_ are!"

"You were the one at fault for not telling anyone where you were going and I wasn't going to take your side on that. With the dangerous work we do don't you think it would've worried the rest of them not knowing where you were?"

"I guess," Gar said, now feeling a little shame when a good deal of Raven's anger had probably been concealed worry.

"You can still go home if you want."

"And leave you to survive this awful place on your own?" Gar asked incredulously. "No way, man, we're a team, even if there are only two of us. Besides," he said cheerily, pulling from his bag a piece of paper, "I've got a _special_ little something to help make it through."

Dick turned from his work on the laptop to see what the fuss was about. It looked like a simple ripped piece of newspaper from the front page of the Gotham Times…but there was something scrawled across the front.

It hit him at once and dread sunk deep in his chest. "_Please_ tell me you didn't…"

"Batman's autograph. Awesome!" the fanboy beamed, holding the ripped paper like it was a sheet of gold. "It may be on newspaper and it may have been written in a hurry because he was trying to get rid of me but I got it all the same!"

Dick responded to his friend's enthusiasm by banging his head into the hard top of the monitor.

"There's _probably_ a good reason you're not my _only_ roommate, Beast Boy."

Nothing gloomy his friend said could darken Gar's spirits as he marched to the wall to pin on it the shining beacon of hope that this mission was assigned to them by his most idolized superhero.

Nothing except…

"Put that tack in the wall and the inspectors will give you another wrist lashing."

With a deep, guttural growl, Gar hurled the little tack across the room with all of his might.


	6. Chapter 6

Under Dick's stern command the two spent the whole of that evening locked up in the little dorm room catching up in every subject with their classmates instead of socializing in the rec room, the sports fields or the once weekly, two-hour long permission trip to spend a night out in the nearby city. Just enough allowed from the school heads so that the boys didn't go crazy with cabin fever in the middle of Physics.

In that Gar was ahead of the curve.

"Come on, man, all the letters on the screen are going blurry! Can't we tuck in for the night?"

Busy with fractions, Dick was without pity. "If you wanted leisure time then you should have stayed in the tower. We just have to get past this load of homework to keep up outside appearances with the professors and I'd rather get it out of the way as soon as possible."

"We're only staying as long as it takes to bring down this secret organization, right?"

"Right."

"And you don't have any plans of _ever_ returning here, right?"

"Right."

"Then _why_ can't you just buy the cheat sheets off someone here!?" Gar burst out in frustration. "_Really!?_ Whether you get an A or not under your own skill has absolutely _no_ relevance, _none!_ Every minute spent answering questions is wasted time!"

"Umm-hmm," Dick mumbled, staring unblinkingly at the screen before him. Gar had very clearly lost his interest somewhere during the beginning of his rant. "Back to work, BB."

He knew it was childish but Gar stomped his feet in a mini fit. His leader could really be infuriating sometimes, that spiky-haired obsessive-compulsive perfectionist just had to have everything his way even if it defied the logic Gar so unusually pulled up in defense. And of course, under his command, Gar knew without saying that he was also forbidden to seek out a way of cheating.

As if he'd have enough pocket change to purchase a cheat sheet from the rich kids anyway…

Gar had that picture bounty of Robin's face secured but it was still just a picture in his hand until he had the chance to go home and exchange it for the pillowcase in Cy's closet. Even if there were more than a few IOU's from some of the more delinquent Titans they'd have to anty up before seeing any pay dirt. Besides, that bounty was reserved for his precious moped.

He was stuck and he knew it. He had to match up to the impossibly high standards Dick set for himself and with the Titan leader knowing his friend's work ethic was checked up on consistently so that he didn't slack off.

Seventy-five minutes passed in the dark, the only light from the monitors, the only sound from the clacking of keys and the tick of the clock that seemed to go a sixth of its normal speed.

Gar chanced a look over his shoulder. "_Pleeease?_"

"_No_."

Denied again, Gar fronted the computer screen with the same tired hatred he'd had when he'd first walked into the room for the night. He should've known the slave driver that Dick was even without the mask, how he'd work him until he got carpal tunnel.

He tried, he really did to hold out longer, rationalizing that if he were to memorize the difficult formula that the answers would come easily, trying to convince his overstressed brain that it wasn't really tired, that he was just in a subject he didn't excel in.

Six solid hours of homework without a break was his limit and Gar had to make that known.

Like a man possessed, Dick's fingers tapped away at the keyboard, filling out college-level answers in record time before moving on to the next hapless question that thought it could best him.

Somewhere in the corner of his eye he saw a familiar shade of green on his desk.

Beast Boy had shapeshifted himself into puppy but not just any puppy, not when it was a matter as important as this. Forget the terriers and the scrawny little Chihuahuas he took out the big guns and had taken the form of a floppy-eared thing, body lost in fluff with big, brown eyes that would manipulate any passing girl into taking him home.

He reared up onto his hind legs begging with a sad, sad expression that only a dog could do.

"Arf!"

"That _doesn't_ work on me."

Gar whined and whimpered but with no result. He bounded over to the other side of the laptop and pawed at the lower right half of the screen until Dick finally looked and saw that the clock read 1:24.

"How 'bout that. Where did the time go?"

Pointed teeth curled back on Gar's innocent puppy form. The little ball of fluff leapt off the desk but this time Dick didn't check to make sure that he was going back to work. He'd asked enough of his teammate that night.

It was however a different story when his fingers no longer met keys and it took him a full two seconds to realize and stop speed typing in the air.

"Hey!" Dick yelled behind him when his swivel chair was being pulled away from the computer.

"Go to sleep!" Gar yelled back with even more force, swirling the chair round and kicking it so it crashed into the bedpost. And before Dick could get back to protest Gar had already saved all the work and pulled the plug.

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"Got to be suffocating," Gar said with a little ill humor as he tightened the tie around his neck that morning.

The second day passed much like the first. Gar was a little wiser and avoided the majority of new lashings to add to his collection.

This time, after the informal introduction the previous day, Gar noticed that those three jock boys were in the second period gym class that he'd missed the previous day. He'd fully expected the uptight supervisors to frown upon such sweat and toil but apparently this academy was of the healthy body, healthy mind variety. Not that Birnamwood was about to allow such barbarism as dodgeball, they were rather suited up to play soccer.

It was something that perked Dick right up from not getting enough sleep last night.

Gar knew well that look of excitement on his leader's face, was even more nervous that usual now that he could see the hungry eyes that demanded domination over all enemies.

The second the coach blew the whistle Gar was a blur, grabbing up two red armbands from the bag for himself and Dick all so that he wouldn't have to be on the receiving end. The other boys might've thought it nothing more than some variety in the day away from a desk but one look to Dick and Gar knew that this was war, war on the school he hated and war on the Bat for making him come back to Gotham.

"Poor, poor blue team," Gar murmured under his breath, giving Dick a wide berth as his winger.

The ball was tossed and before the other forward could react Dick leapt up like a gazelle for it.

"Hah!" he cried, snagging the ball and tearing down the field, leaving all the other forwards and wingers in his wake. The first one that caught up came in fast from a sharp angle but Dick was ready, switching off his main dribbling leg. He swept the ball from the ground onto his ankle, balancing it there and taking it out of the opponent's path and the boy just kept running out of momentum.

He was too pumped to stay still for more than a second and popped the ball back to his front.

"I'm open! I'm open!" Gar yelled when he finally caught up, flailing his arms.

But just as soon as Dick had passed it over Gar lost it to an opposing player. That wouldn't pass for Dick and as soon as the player turned for the other goal he charged the boy head on, pulling fancy footwork at the last second by rotating round the ball, pushing the other boy back and snagging it again for himself.

The goal was coming up fast and he would be swayed by no more teammates.

The boy hapless enough to have been selected goalie for the blue team was only just bracing himself but not hard enough, fast enough before there was the swoosh of the net behind him. He wasn't the only boy gawking at the miles per hour that ball had gone.

The blue goalie gave the ball a mighty kick for the next round…

Only for Dick to jump up and give it a sideways backlash straight back into the blue goal.

As the game continued many of the boys had a great mind to give up and just become spectators on the field for the mad devotion of the Titan leader. When Dick was in that mode Gar was lucky enough to have gotten the first pass, knew not to bother holding out for another.

Chad and Bradley were some of the few boys who had bothered to keep playing as if to prove something but even with their beefier builds Dick danced in and out of their attempts to steal the ball with ease.

Goal. Goal. Goal. No one else was permitted to touch that ball no matter how hard they tried. Dick scored and scored and the one time the goalie actually caught one the force of it was so great that he was bowled back into the netting so in a certain viewpoint he may've scored double.

Blue's final play was adding two more goalies to the line-up.

Gar looked on and sighed and just as he knew his leader always had something up his sleeve in any given situation so did Dick have one now. Others may have thought his fatigue of scoring every goal that hour was getting to him when the ball he kicked the ball into the left goalpost but he did it at such an angle that the ball ricocheted off into a baffled Chad who fell over into Bradley.

Dick waited with satisfaction as the ball crawled over the goal line.

"What?" he said to the others sprawled out across the field as if only just coming out of his competitive little world to notice. "We still have twelve minutes left. Is everyone done already?"

"Can _all_ of us go against you, circus freak?" a redhead asked sourly, sprawled out over the grass.

"If you think it would help."

The results of the match had a funny way of lifting Dick's spirits in much the way Starfire did while it in turn turned the rest of them to a little gloom. No one had the mind to get between Dick and his precious soccer ball when his energy was not depleted and he hacky-sacked it head to toe and back again.

"Been practicing much?" asked Regis for he was the one of the three who had dropped out early and still had his breath.

"In so many ways," Dick responded and he let the ball roll away in that he wasn't the one that had to initiate conversation this time. He'd gotten their attention in previous years in being more than just a lucky orphan picked up by a multi-billionaire and just had to remind them again.

Either party recognizing when their boss was getting involved in something, Gar, Bradley and Chad were quick to get in on it when they had a few minutes of free time.

"I don't remember inviting _you_," Regis said coldly to Gar as if talking to an insect. "What exactly is your family's business?"

"I-" Gar started, caught off guard. He'd considered this question before but his ideas of being heir to the paperclip or Visa fortune were met coldly by his partner.

"You – you-" Regis came back, mocking the other boy's slight hesitation. "With a spineless attitude like that it doesn't really matter now _does_ it? I should hope you have some older brothers as heirs in place of you?"

"We're getting off the subject here," said Dick, careful to be neutral when Gar was starting to fume and Regis looked down on him in contempt.

"We are, aren't we? I dislike being in the presence of lesser beings." Regis flicked away an imagined piece of dust from his shirt. "Might you shoo away your cousin, Grayson? There's no need to babysit him when your guardian's not here to monitor you."

"I can manage for myself!"

"Can you now? Then be a sport and go do that very thing on the other end of the field." He clapped his hands. "Chop chop now."

Not about to be bullied by a few jocks bigger than him, Gar stood his ground. He couldn't use the beast within but still it gave him strength when his scrawny frame did not.

That strong stand was broken when Dick told him to go.

"What!?"

"There are plenty of other students to socialize with," he said plainly. "Go find some."

"Fine!" And Gar stormed off, not in any particular direction, to find someone else to talk with in the few minutes they had left.

"Now that _he's_ gone," Regis drawled out, looking after until Gar was out of earshot, "anything in particular you were interested in, Grayson? _So_ many generations of secrets in this school and yet ironically the most noteworthy occur in the year of your absence."

"Now that my innocent cousin is gone," Dick said as if laying it on thick, "why don't you tell me everything you've got?"

Regis gave a chuckle. "Don't think you can be as bold in every subject as you are in soccer. Trust is one of the few things in the world money can't buy. Dump the cousin and you can become a part of the elite...perhaps a top member one day."

He offered a hand.

With a secret as big as the one they were hiding of course Dick would have to build a fake sense of trust to be let into secrets circles. He took that outstretched hand to seal his membership into the popular kids.

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"_How_ could I have forgotten how big a part social status plays in high school?"

It was a question Dick proposed in front of the dorm room's mirror on their second night as if it was a great big duh staring him right in the face. A year out of school fighting crime exclusively and he had forgotten its most important aspect.

Gar lay on the top bunk flicking around his foot in annoyance not evaporated from that morning.

"So new adjustment to the mission," Dick decided right there and then. "We're to regroup into the different social groups in the institution. I've already found mine and so it's your job tomorrow to find and mingle with one of your own. Different groups may have different ranges of information."

"Hmmph!"

"We're moving in the direction of a real goal and that's all you can say?"

His dangling foot flicked faster. "So I'm not allowed to even _talk_ to you outside this room anymore?"

"I suppose you're not, no," And when that was brought to his attention Dick felt some guilt break up the rest of his thoughts. "We may have our real identities in this place but when it comes down to it we're really just actors here. Don't get so bent out of shape."

"Oooo, _easy_ for you to say. You weren't the one to get snubbed today."

"Social groups are a very solid reason for you to be a partner on this mission," Dick said, trying to give his friend a confidence booster when he'd had to take so much bad tidings lately. "You can get into places I can't with your…_particular_ interests. Were you aware of this? Is it why you came?"

The first time Robin directly said that he was glad for the backup brought a little grin to Gar's face.

"Just so we're square, Dick," Gar said, leaning out over the bunk, "you're getting barred out of all comic book exchanges and superhero discussions with the new friends _I'm_ going to make."

Dick crawled beneath the sheets of the lower bunk with a yawn. "You say that as if it's a punishment."

"Room inspection!"

The sudden exclamation and bang to the door startled the two but they quickly got out of bed, stood straight before the door awaiting judgment. Inspections were never given any warning.

It was a time when everyone else was tucking in for the night but the inspector had sharp eagle eyes and a box filled with confiscated items, looking to add more to his collection.

"Names?" he drew out with boredom.

"Richard Grayson," Dick said at once.

"Garfield Logan," Gar said straight after.

"Matches up." The man was straight on to his work, picking up first the things in direct sight like the half eaten apples on either desk to prevent ants. They were given no more rights than criminals as the inspector went through their things with little regard.

Being superheroes they had no illegal contraband to hide but it annoyed them all the same as he ticked little things off the list, added them to his box or simply threw them away. The boys' annoyance however shot up to panic when the man unrolled a certain purple suit.

The man's back turned, Dick and Gar signaled silently to the other over what to do but what _could_ they do?

"Oversized footie pajamas," the inspector drawled.

The mood of the boys changed in a flash to Gar growing hot with indignation, having to be held back by Dick to keep from giving the man a piece of his mind.

"Non approved." With this final confiscated item the inspector was gone.

As soon as he was, Gar burst out with all that he had been forced to keep in. "Footie pajamas!? _Footie pajamas!_ Why does _no one_ recognize my superhero costume!? How many heroes can completely reshape their genetic composition, huh!?"

"B, we didn't _want_ him to recognize it," Dick felt he had to remind him. "I told you to hide it better and-"

But with his friend's logical statement Gar rounded on him. "They would've recognized _your_ outfit."

Dick gave a tired sigh, not about to get caught up into this conversation. It was an easily replaced costume; it _had_ to be with all the wear and tear they went through in their line of work. Just another lesson for Gar to pick up.


	7. Chapter 7

Oooh, ahh, teenage angst! Enter at your own risk! BTW, the two are fighting in loud, angry _whispers_, kay? They are trained superheroes so this just comes naturally.

Arual-san

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On the top bunk Gar lay sprawled out like a star, mouth wide open and snoring loudly. He appeared deep under and peaceful in the ridiculous position until he heard something and his eyes flashed open.

Once his head had cleared a little he found that the noise had come from the lone window.

Where they'd left it closed before it remained closed now and the wind outside continued to batter that side of the building. Gar still stared at it for a few seconds as if expecting the stressor to appear but just when he'd thought he'd imagined it and rolled over to get back to sleep he found the source of the noise kneeling right down beside the lower half of the bunk bed.

Gar almost squeaked in surprise but managed to stay quiet as he looked over the ledge at the dark figure below. Dark clothing blended into the dark room and only by a full head of brown hair did he realize it was a teenage girl.

_A girl, _Gar swooned over only in his thoughts. He'd gone two full days without seeing one in flesh and blood in the warped way the academy separated the sexes and he relished the chance of being reminded how good they smelled.

_Ah, cinnamon and oranges…_ But enough was enough after only a few seconds and Gar snapped himself out of it to watch the girl and what she was doing there. Dorm boys may have been rich but they were sure not to have valuables worth chancing the heavy security.

Though she had most certainly broken in to a private residence, with the chivalry in which he was raised to treat the fairer sex Gar couldn't strike the girl down when she hadn't yet committed a heinous crime. He watched her, ready in mind with the image of a jungle cat to pounce if she tried anything.

But the girl hadn't knelt where she knelt for cover or to raid the nightstand before her. She rather seemed to only have eyes for the boy sleeping on the bottom bunk and seemed to lean a little over him, watching him sleep.

Gar tensed on his feet when the girl moved a gloved hand over Dick. The bed blocked his view but by the girl's sudden yelp he guessed that Robin's renowned reflexes had struck once again and seized her wrist in a strangling hold.

Blanketing rustled below as Dick woke up the second after but his voice was not the hard voice he reserved for criminals.

"B-Barbara?"

The girl gave a small, off-kilter smile. One half of the former team that took their jobs way too seriously had addressed her by her real name and not her alias that was Batgirl.

"Just wanting to make sure you hadn't gone soft on me," Batgirl said a little sadly. Only then did Dick notice that he still maintained a death-grip over her wrist and he let it go with great haste. "You used to pick me up for patrol in the same way, testing me. Lucky Daddy never caught you."

All so that he wouldn't attract the sharpened senses of those two students of the Bat Gar shifted shape to the small form of a squirrel and back again to human just to shift onto his back without attracting notice. He knew it wasn't his place to listen but with the way he'd been woken he wasn't going to be able to get back to sleep again any time soon.

Dick pulled himself into a sitting position. "You should be on patrol right now."

Though he was right in that she was breaking protocol by taking a selfish action instead of her assigned task Barbara looked away in that was the first thing that came to her old teammate's mind.

"Should I get back to that then?"

It was a trap question if Dick had ever heard one before, one that girls lived to torment guys with. He knew the right thing to say but it wasn't a lie either. "No. I…I'm glad to see you again, Bar."

Dick was sure that had been the answer she'd wanted but even he was startled when she gave him a harsh slap across the face in return. Up above Gar cringed as if he had been the one slapped.

"Barbara, _what-!?_"

"_What?_" she came back, mocking his word in detest. "_What_ am I doing this for?"

Barbara reared back her hand again to give his other cheek a matching pink handprint should he be dense enough not to know the answer.

"_Why_ would I have reason to do this, Dick?" she demanded when he was silent. "Have all these years fighting crime turned me into the same psychopathic lunatic that I keep putting behind bars? I swear if you give me that blasted silent treatment I'll leave no part of you un-bruised!"

"I…" Dick started and it was something he wasn't proud of, "I shouldn't have left the way I did."

"No you shouldn't have!" Batgirl yelled back. "Did you have any thought, any care about everyone you left behind!? All we had to go on was that you and Bruce had a fight, that later that night you skipped town on your motorcycle!"

As Gar listened along he couldn't help but feel that the start of Robin's new life in Jump paralleled how Gar himself had ditched the titans without notice to be a part of this mission. But Dick hadn't gone with the intention of being gone for a mere week.

"You left your communicator behind on your bed and you must've scanned all your clothing for any tracers because we couldn't _find_ you. I – I was looking for you that whole night, every chance I got for _four_ days until you had the decency to call! What if you had been ambushed alone like that!? You could have been killed!"

"I can take care of myself!"

"And _why_ is it only ever about _you!?_" Batgirl fired right back, her anger held in much too long. "_You_ were unhappy with _your_ current situation, _you_ had to get away, _you_ had to find a new life for _yourself!_"

He couldn't look at her, looked down at the blanketing. "I _did_ call."

"After four _days_ of us wondering and worrying! Bruce and Alfred never _said_ anything but they were both deeply affected by you just up and running away! Yes, Bruce too!" she repeated when she saw that he scoffed. "Having us there seems to keep him in check from ever going too far in detaining criminals in a fit of anger but with you abandoning him he just…just worked himself to exhaustion to keep his mind off it."

"Hmmph."

"And that's another thing, the _main_ thing!" Now that she was on a roll Batgirl seemed fit to tackle anything. "You two are more stubborn than any mule ever born! You have differences in opinion but instead of talking it out and _resolving_ it like normal humans-!"

"You think I've never tried discussing things with him?"

"Maybe you did but there really isn't a point either way when neither of you are willing to budge on your viewpoints. Take that overinflated ego of yours out of the equation for once and you might see some progress!"

"If Bruce would ever _listen_ to me-!"

"It's _your_ fault too!" Batgirl headed off. "You can't just do this, be bitter forever over a few petty differences when you have the history you do with him, the good memories. You got away, you have your freedom; don't you want to make up with him at all?"

He gave her the silent treatment she had warned him against and she slugged him in the arm for it.

"It appears that the great Boy Wonder is really a coward."

"_What_ did you say!?"

"Only a coward runs away from his problems, continues to run away because he's afraid."

"I am _not_ afraid of a confrontation!"

"Not afraid?" she said like it was a rich joke. "You're just never going to _do_ it is all?"

"I was going to when I was good and ready and not before," he returned but despite the force in which he said it Batgirl wasn't fully convinced. "Things were going fine over in Jump, I could do things how _I_ wanted without always getting shot down, I only got dragged back here for the sake of a mission that only _I_ could do! I never wanted to come back!"

But as soon as those words came out of his mouth Batgirl flinched back like she'd taken a dagger to the chest and with a sinking feeling in chest Dick regretted what he'd said immediately.

"Bar…"

She turned away as if just hearing his voice stung and got to her feet.

"Barbara," he said again, soberly, standing as she stood and holding her shoulder back so that she wouldn't leave with the tears he was sure she was holding back with the ever so slight way she shook. "I didn't mean it."

"But you _said_ it."

"I wasn't thinking," he insisted though sure the point was moot. "It just…came out."

"You…you left _me_ too," she said sadly, low so that it was only just above the sound of the ticking clock.

"I'm sorry." He could've given the same tired excuse that he needed to get away and be his own man, that the only way he could finally get out and do it was in a fit of anger but she was tired of hearing it. "I never meant to hurt you."

"But you _did_."

Dick was sorry for what he had put his former teammate through and he could only say as much so many times. It was all he could do to make certain that he did not let her leave as upset as she was and produce another estranged relationship atop the one he already had.

He couldn't be satisfied with talking to Batgirl's back and so he turned her around, which she did not protest against.

She wouldn't look at him directly, probably to protect herself from being hurt anymore than she was at present.

"And you're just going to up and leave again back to your Titans just as soon as you can," Batgirl finished, holding back a sniff, saying what she knew to be the truth. "Will I get a goodbye this time?"

In place of an answer, Dick kept his hand over her shoulder a couple seconds longer, squeezed it before letting go so that she got the message.

That simple gesture only elicited a tired sigh out of Batgirl, that it was too simple, the reassuring touch of a friend and nothing more: another something stolen away from her when she'd barely gotten a taste that they could ever be anything more in the few times they'd dated.

"Is she pretty?" she asked as she watched his hand return to his side.

The intuitive creatures females were, Dick shouldn't have been surprised but he was anyway. He wasn't so dense to know that it wasn't the time to elaborate on the question posed and he said as much.

"I'm glad that you came." He was glad even throughout the stinging pink mark on his face. He knew he deserved it and that he deserved to take on the role her own personal punching bag if Batgirl saw fit. "I missed you too, Babs."

"Hmm…" she mumbled over as if in an afterthought, "haven't heard that nickname in a while."

She was still off in her own distant way getting through the night's events and in that she was still sorting out long denied feelings of anger and hurt the boy, who had both walked out on their team and did not feel the same way she did for him, was no longer the one suited to ease the pain.

"Talk it out with your dad," Dick said aloud what she was most likely thinking but still said it in effort to help. Of course Barbara couldn't unveil the exact specifics but teenage girls got their hearts broken on a regular basis.

She nodded, not saying anything more.

"And while I'm here," he continued before she could leave, reaching for a hidden compartment under his bunk. He took her gloved hand and placed inside a 'T' communicator of an honorary Titan. "We're teammates again. I'll call you if anything happens."

Batgirl looked down at the communicator and her little smile was maybe not as sad. Her slender fingers ran over her utility belt under she came upon a compartment large enough to hold it.

Her eyes slid to the window she'd entered from but slid straight back on noticing something behind them.

"Oh crud, your roommate's awake."

Dick whipped round on the spot to where Gar retreated completely into the covers. "Go back to sleep," he growled as if such a thing was possible to do in an instant.

Batgirl cleared her throat to take on the role of imposing authority. "There's no need to be alarmed. Your roommate was the witness to a crime. I just needed to ask him a few questions and-"

"It's okay, Bar," Dick headed off the excuse. "He's one of the Titans from Jump."

"Oh?" Batgirl seemed relieved to not have to finish the same, tired routine of calming civilians. It was a diversion from less pleasant feelings and one she seemed keen on, trying to catch a glimpse of him from under the covers.

Only now with the invitation from Batgirl did Gar jump down from the top bunk to join in on the conversation.

Two days without sight of a real girl suddenly made him feel a little shy and he clutched the back of his head. "H-hi."

"You're…Beast Boy right?" And she couldn't help but notice how the boy beamed for the recognition. "But I thought you were green."

"I am," he confirmed. "Just a little magic from modern technology at work."

Batgirl's smile turned up from a forced one into a real one at the other boy's naturally sunny mood. It was something that the Bats perhaps needed once in a while when their patriarch was such a dark, imposing shadow over the city of Gotham.

"When it's night I'll never be far away," she reminded as she walked to the window, grappler in hand. "Keep in touch."

With quick pull up of the window Batgirl was gone as quickly as she'd come, the same silent shadow as Batman and Robin. Dick watched her leave but when he looked back to where Gar stood beside him he saw that his friend had a dopey, dazed over smile.

"Gah!" Gar jumped in place, straightened up into the stance of a tin soldier in that he'd been caught gazing at Robin's former teammate in that way.

"Come on," Dick ordered, taking wide strides to the door for what could only be another investigation to their mission but for once Gar didn't have the thought of protesting against it.

Neither of them was going to get any sleep that night anyway.


	8. Chapter 8

Cue sad chapter. Lights, camera, action! Please read and review, readers, I appreciate every one I receive! And if you want to read the new chapters fresh off the press check at around 10 or 11 pm central time. It's the usual time I wrap one up. Thanks!

Arual-san

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Cloaked in the shadow of night, the hallways of Birnamwood seemed to stretch on so much longer than in the day. The two wore socks to stifle footsteps but even Dick was extra careful not to make a sound when it would echo for several yards.

"All right," Dick started in a whisper, saying out the plan so that they were on the same page. "It's going to take a little time before the popular kids trust me enough to let me in on their secrets. In the meantime we can gather evidence as to _what_ it is that they're smuggling."

Dick handed his partner a high-tech gadget borrowed from Cyborg's arsenal.

"It's a magnifying lens that will scope out impurities and imperfections in the framework of valuables," he explained, activating his own. "Artwork, furniture, diamond rings; it can analyze any known matter and find out if it's a fake."

With a new flashy gadget at his disposal, Gar also flashed his on at once and scanned it over his arm to find that the academy-issued pajama top he was wearing consisted of 96% cotton, 4% polyester. Had it been a standard mission he might've had the mind to direct the lens onto his leader's head to see what percentage of hair gel his normal electrified hair consisted of.

"Aren't there going to be like _guards_ or something?"

"Three to be exact," Dick confirmed as if waiting for the question, "all over the age of sixty. They've all been at security for several years but as long as you stay sharp at all times they won't be any trouble to bypass. And turn your lens off; we don't need that light giving us away."

"You turned _yours_ on first!" Gar hissed.

"Just to make sure that it was still functioning correctly." He might've been the Boy Wonder but even he had his limits and pulled out a map of the school. "It might be a very faint light but only switch it on if you're actually scanning something."

"Roger, roger." His lens went black and they were in darkness once again.

"So the dorm rooms are closest to the south wing of the academy that holds the library. That's where we'll be investigating today. That's-" – he paused to remember – "Tonneson's territory. He's got a limp in his leg but doesn't have any reservations about throwing his flashlight in a vital area to bring you down to his speed."

"Is there _anyone_ nice here or do they breed meanness along with class?"

Dick didn't feel the need for unnecessary reply when they were supposed to be being quiet and Gar took his cue as they crept through the deserted halls. Dick could make out the map after his eyes had adjusted but it was straining. "Can you change into something with night vision?"

"Uhhh…there's some moonlight there by the window!" And Gar ripped the paper away so that they could see that a right turn was needed next. The great cedar doors of the library were open at all times but their time of skating through the place easy was over. If they were caught out of bed at such a late hour they would have to sacrifice their wrists up for more abuse and raise suspicion among students and teachers.

"Valuables," Dick reiterated before they separated right and left to cover the massive library.

Gar nodded. "Paintings, sculptures, vases and those fancy hanging rugs, got it."

The boys set off through the narrow corridors of the library and despite Dick's earlier warning were forced to blink the lens light on and off just to see when there was no longer any light from the moon. Even with a two man squad searching such a vast library would surely take up all of their time that night despite how quickly they worked.

Gar ran his lens over a Van Gogh, Dick over a Chinese Dynasty vase three times his size. Both returned negative results and they moved on from piece to piece all for a green light to appear on the lens to confirm their suspicions.

He'd gotten through a good twenty pieces before Gar saw the beam of a flashlight and a wheezing cough. The guard was only a few sections away in the Gardening section.

"Phhpt!" Gar whispered aloud, realizing how ridiculous it was. "Like anyone's going to sneak out for a secret late night read."

He may have been one of the underestimated Titans but he wasn't a Titan for nothing. He knew how to be sneaky and light on his feet. As the guard drew nearer and nearer Gar simply dropped down to the floor and rolled through the empty space under the shelf into the adjoining section.

The light flashed back his way.

Gar backed up into the shelf, stick straight, not daring to breathe. Any more lashings and his wrists could start bleeding.

"Dang kids," the guard Tonneson wheezed as he pocketed a scrap of paper and pencil left behind by a student.

Only when the guard moved away could Gar resume breathing. He continued scanning valuables, faster as if to make up for lost time. He got through another eight sections until he reached the end of the main wing where the rest split off into branches.

Dick was there waiting on the other end, finishing up scanning a painting. Even from several feet away Gar saw yet another red light.

The Titan leader caught sight of his partner and tapped the shut lens to check on Gar's progress. He was received by Gar with a shake of the head. Dick's end had not proved any better results but he wasn't discouraged, signaling Gar to move on to the next section.

They checked both ways as if crossing the street for when only the end of the shelf could cover them.

They stepped out, darted into the library's heart that was a circle for reading but one of them wasn't quick enough.

"Hey you!"

The boys jumped into the lowered reading section at once and silently, frantically trying to communicate without words they scrambled for the first exit from the circle. They happened to pick the same one and with the narrow space they got jammed.

Heavy footsteps pounded along the hall.

Panic mounting, Gar tried harder to squeeze through with his scrawnier frame but Dick kept his cool, shoving his teammate through first, breaking the jam and getting them moving. They'd gone into the same left wing but still broke up there to give the guard a run for his money.

It was a less used wing, not yet remodeled the frame of the main wing and for that they were at a disadvantage. Only when each of them had gone down the sections as far as they could did they realize that there were no connecting paths to other sections.

They had both reached a dead end.

Dick's eyes flashed between the gaps in the books until he could make out his partner several sections away but it was Gar that had the idea of climbing up the shelves to avoid detection. For the acrobat in Dick, such a thing was a slice of pie but the stifling sound of the socks was not without the disadvantage of making sock on wood just a little too slippery.

Gar wasn't so lucky. He slipped and a few books clattered with him onto the floor.

With the guard now coming Gar's way and no where else Dick slid back down to ground level. He peered through gaps and tried to signal Gar best as he could but Gar had pressed himself into the back wall. After all the times of real life-threatening danger why was he getting petrified _now_, why wouldn't he transform!? He had only seconds until the guard reached him!

Just when Dick thought they were caught, the little of Gar he could see seemed to vanish…but his pajamas were left behind and crumpled into a heap on the ground for evidence.

The guard caught up but when he did the pajama top came to hover menacingly in the air before him.

"_Ghost!_" It was too much for the old man's weak heart to take and he ran for dear life.

The threat had passed but Dick continued to stare at the scene through the many shelves at the unusual way it had gone down. When he reached the other dead end there was the crumpled heap of pajamas.

"BB?"

A green bluebird (ironically enough) materialized somewhere from the shelves. It changed into a boy with a tomato-red face and for good reason. He was wearing nothing but boxer-briefs.

Dick's eyelids drooped low and he kept it simple. "_Why?_"

Embarrassed, Gar gripped the back of his neck. "Eh-heh…my uniform isn't just a fashion statement or a standard issue from the Doom Patrol. I kind of _need_ it if I'm going to be transforming."

"Kay."

"You see," Gar continued, grabbing up the pajama pants and putting them on, "the skin-tight spandex does this thing of tricking the shape-shifting ma-jiggy into thinking it's my real skin. I also don't have as many uniforms as you because I kind of need to…ingrain my own skin cells into the fibers with a lot of bristle brushing."

"Right," Dick said flatly, making a private note to never touch one of Gar's suits again.

"Y-yeah, crazy huh!" Gar burst out. "You don't know how many times I got caught sneaking around in the buff at night before I figured that out!"

"Too much information," sighed Dick but he added in a grumble that couldn't be lower, "At least you don't have Batman boxers."

"_Hey…_" Gar said as if considering and he got smacked over the head for it.

"You are _NOT_ getting Batman boxers!" Dick ordered with much aggression after unintentionally giving his partner the idea. His mentor's autograph had been pushing it. "So help me, I _will_ fire you from the team!"  
"_Fire_ me?" came back Gar in disbelief, fully clothed now. "I don't remember ever giving you a résumé!"

They argued it over back and forth, felt free to do so as they scanned the rest of the library with the echoes of the library when the poor guard had been scared out of his wits and was long gone. There was no one else in a long range.

They met up again after Dick had calmed down and Gar snapped shut his lens. "Nothing."

"Me neither, everything's the real deal." Dick had that look that he was thinking over other possibilities. "But this would be the _perfect_ place to lift items from. It's the nearest location to the dorms and with good luck is easy to navigate through."

"Well, we'll just have to keep looking," Gar said, always his positive self.

The boys set out to return for their dorms for maybe a few hours of sleep. Their shock of seeing Batgirl in such form was now maybe compromised by their failure to gain evidence at the library.

Gar risked a glance at his partner. "_Sooo_…can I get _Superman_ boxers?"

Again Dick's eyes drooped low. "Go nuts."

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It was Gar's time to find a social group now that he was flying solo in the daytime hours. Every school was bound to have a social group specifically for any student that walked through its doors and he only had to wait until the break between second and third to find his.

"And the Bat dropped Two-Face like-" – the bi-spectacled boy mimicked the action – "that!"

"I was actually at that bank with my folks when it was getting robbed! I actually _saw_ him beat up those crooks!"

He had the best story of all seeing Batman's true identity but Gar only smiled and let them talk it up. He was only a visitor to Gotham City while the other boys had probably been there their whole lives and he was plenty happy just to be a part of it.

Dick passed him by but hardly spared him a look when they were no longer permitted to be friends in the public eye. The group Gar had selected appeared to be more fun, easier to gain access to, but that wasn't what this mission was about.

He joined the group of popular kids, all business. They couldn't hold out on him forever.

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Three days in: Dick hardly felt like he'd made any progress when the secret information was still being withheld. Anyone that didn't know him well might've thought that he was taking it with grace but since he'd gotten back to his dorm room for the evening hard blue eyes hadn't left the computer screen for two hours. He'd hacked into the school's files to investigate the quarterly reviews of the professors when he could only inquire of them with concerns to marks for his work. Even then he couldn't probe very far very often.

He took a sip from his glass of water as he looked into the file on Professor Baxter and it gave him a moment to glance at the clock overhead.

Only then did he realize two hours had passed.

"Beast Boy must be having fun at his superhero meeting," Dick mumbled, hardly realizing what he said. All he had was his computer when he only wanted to spend as just little time as he could with his snobby new gang.

Disappointment greeted him yet again in that there was nothing abnormal about Baxter, not a change in his mannerisms or anything else he could discern. Dick clicked on the next file but his attention was yanked away to the sudden rattling of the doorknob.

Gar appeared and Dick jumped to his feet in shock. Half of the boy's face was swollen and that same eye had gone a sickly shade of purple. Blood leaked from his nose and he walked carefully, suggesting of more bruises underneath.

At once Dick rushed over, made his friend sit down on his bed. "Gar, what happened!?"

"Your new _"friends"_ happened," Gar spat out, angry eyes narrowing at the thought. "They caught me alone when I was heading back here." The blood was leaking past his lips and he sucked back his sinuses to try to stop it. He gave a sniff but refused to cry.

"Don't do that, you'll make it worse." Dick grabbed the tissue box from the computer and shoved it into Gar's hands. Going the standard route, Gar plugged his nose with a tissue and tilted his head back.

"Keep at it," Dick said in concern, rushing out the door. It wasn't an injury any worse than ones they'd received fighting crime but that it came as such a surprise and from such an established institution somehow made it harder to bear. And this time Gar hadn't been able to use his powers; he had just been one small boy against three big jocks.

Dick returned with a cloth full of ice. Gar accepted it graciously and half of his face disappeared under it.

"Is there anything we can _do_ about this?"

It was an angry question, full of doubt, and Dick wished he could say that there was anything that could be done. There wasn't, not with the discipline-happy school board and that Regis' father was an influential figure in Gotham. He himself, Batman's own protégé and Bruce Wayne's ward, was helpless to effect the situation in the slightest way. All of their work would be for nothing if Dick were to even try nudging the popular boys' attention away from their new punching bag.

Dick could do nothing but he did make his friend take off his shirt so he could put any other bruises on ice.

"If you still want to…" Dick threaded carefully, carefully as he dabbed the nasty bruise on Gar's back, but his grip on the cloth nearly slipped when Gar's face whipped back.

"I'm _not_ going home!" he said with force, with so much more anger than a few minor injuries in that his leader was trying to go easy on him when he didn't want or need it. "I might be the _baby_ of the Titans but I don't need you treating me like it!"

"It wasn't _like_ that, I-"

But Gar jerked his head away as if he could bar out the words. He reached blindly for another tissue when the one he had was getting damp with blood. He came across the box and grabbed it forcefully.

With the force in which he grabbed it one of the other things on the nightstand – a photo frame – went flying.

The boys stared with the same wide eyes as it fell and it couldn't be told which of their faces was more horrified: Dick's for how much the picture meant to him or Gar's for his terrible guilt of ever dropping the precious thing.

Dick abandoned his ice pack and lunged for it but too late. A crack resounded through the room.

His friend's back was to him, kneeling on the floor, and that Gar couldn't see his face and how bad the damage was made it all that much worse. Forget his injuries, they would heal but…

"Only the glass is cracked," Dick said impassively, picking the frame up like he was handling fine porcelain. "Glass can be replaced."

As Dick sat back down next to him Gar was a bag of nerves in how drastically Dick's demeanor had changed after that picture had been in danger. His quiet was like a thick fog around him, enveloping Gar as it did him, and he seemed distant.

Bracing himself, Gar looked down to see the damage. An oblong 'Y' had cracked over the picture of the circus performers, severing through the mother's waist and running through the eyes of the young boy.

"I…I'm sorry."

"It was an accident." Dick's voice was forgiving but still a little down. He could've stayed minutes staring at the frame, still frazzled that the damage could have been much worse but Gar talked him out of it to relieve some guilt.

"Those are your parents?" Gar asked of him very hesitantly, wondering if he dared. "That little boy…?"

Dick nodded.

"Before I saw that picture a couple months ago, before we came to the academy," Gar continued in his friend's silence. "I always thought Batman was well…your dad."

Hearing that made Dick look away from the picture, remember that Gar was really still there.

"Don't take it like the whole Slade thing but…you two really _do_ act the same. You both have that same kind of genius for the work you do and you were the best team I'd ever read about in any of the papers. You both even" – Gar gave a weak chuckle – "told me not to call you 'Sir'."

"He's not my father." And as Dick said it his eyes wandered over the image of John Grayson who was.

"Funny," Gar said but nothing in his voice confirmed his words, "you would think it would be a prereq for being a superhero…being an orphan."

Something in the way Gar said that made Dick look back at him a little differently.

"You too? But weren't Mento and Elasti-Girl-?"

Gar shook his head through the tissue on his nose and ice pack on his cheek. His friend had had misconceptions of his relations as Gar had him but he took it a little better when Elasti-Girl had been a great replacement for something that could never be replaced.

"Has it stopped bleeding yet?" Dick asked vaguely, getting a little closer to home.

When he was received with a negative Dick told him to just keep at it until it did. He moved the tissue box onto the top bunk and it was all the signal Gar needed to know that conversation was over that night.


	9. Chapter 9

Thanks for the support everyone! I've cooled off and am happy again! Enjoy!

Arual-san

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As other students rushed through the halls of the academy for first period, stopped to chat like normal kids would, Dick had parked it in front of a certain window overlooking the track field. It was the diameter of a hula hoop – the only patch of brown over the field of perfectly maintained green grass. It was the exact place where the teleportation device had been activated. It had been the only thing that had tested positive under the scanning lens to have been exposed to a certain light, the only thing that proved Dick's suspicions thus far.

Taking a moment to glare it down did something in the way of convincing him that this wasn't all just a waste of time.

Periods passed, the popular kids droned on and on about themselves and how powerful their fathers were, and Dick just put it all on auto-pilot. It was all the same as the previous days but still he was ready to snap into attention the instant anything changed.

Nothing ever did so when the day finally ended Dick was much the same as Gar had been walking into their dorm for the first time. But only did he dare to loosen his posture out of the sight of all professors who had the right to inflict punishment even out of school hours.

He collapsed onto his bed like he hadn't slept for a year.

Even with a face still half swollen Gar burst into the room with such cheer that he didn't even mind shutting the door so as to not be caught mixing outside his social group with a popular kid.

"Robin! Robin!"

"Mmmmrr…" Dick mumbled through the pillow without the slightest care.

"But I've got good news," Gar persisted, yanking at his partner's feet when he wouldn't budge from the bed. "There's something we can do!"

A series of intelligible mumbling came from the pillow.

"What?" And Gar pulled his friend's scalp back to hear him.

"I'm…_not_ playing…Stank-ball."

"No, no, it's not that." Gar let go and Dick's face fell straight back into the pillow. "I just found out we can go on a little field trip into the city for four hours. Won't it be great to get out of here for a little while, clear your head?"

"We're _just_ going to have to come _back_," the boy growled, making little effort to move his head to a side.

"Yeah well I think the geeky kids I'm with are pretty innocent but I've been grilling them for information on your group. They _had_ to have picked something up after getting beaten up so many times. Still probing around." Now that he'd told the basics Gar could get on to his plan. "An outing wouldn't just be for us either because my group told me they weren't taking this trip because it was "reserved" for _your_ group."

"So? I can't _take_ those guys anymore today."

"_Sooo_ if your group is holding out on their secrets when _you're_ around why don't we just blend into the crowd while we're out and _spy_ on them?" Gar seemed awfully proud of himself and he was a sunbeam to show. "If I know you, I _know_ you brought all your little gadgets."

Where Dick's energy seemed to have run dry before, he suddenly had the surge to roll over on his back and he looked at his friend as if he couldn't believe his ears. Had Beast Boy _really_ just thought of a mission more promising than any of his?

00000000000000000000000000000000

"_Don't_ lose them."

So focused was Dick on testing the frequency of his bugs over his earpiece that he didn't even glance away from them when he'd pressed the button to speak to the chauffer. Gar was on the opposite end of the back seat, Dick naturally not permitting him anywhere the tiny, delicate equipment, but that was fine with Gar, the boy still not having gotten over that he was sitting in a lap of luxury.

Gar still messed around with anything and everything in the fancy car with the mind he'd probably never be in one again once the mission was over. Only when he discovered a pack of cigars did Dick take notice and slap his fingers away.

The car came to a stop in the reserved parking of a fancy nightclub and even then they'd arrived only minutes after the popular kids. Regis, Chad and Bradley were dressed down from their blazers and accompanied by security guards.

Dick popped open the door but only peered out slightly to watch them before stepping out. The effect was ruined when Gar crawled over his back to see too but only the effect. Despite that it was in the heart of festive Gotham City nightlife it was to be no less undercover than their stroll through the library.

The chauffer's voice drifted back, British like Alfred. "Is this a single stop for the night or shall I keep the engine prepped for your return, young sirs?"

"Kill the engine," Dick answered as he watched the boys go through check in. "We'll keep you posted on the details, Wilson."

"Might you be sure that you don't require any bodyguards?" the old man asked of them for the second time that night. A phone lay right at the stick shift. "This city can really be quite…venturesome, especially to young heirs such as yourselves."

Gar looked back with a wink. "We can take care of ourselves."

Once they'd reached the doors of Café Brenda it could be told that there was no cover charge or guest list. Only big names could pass through those doors and Wayne plus guest was one of them. Clubs, even high-class bland ones like this one, were better than art exhibits and auctions any day and so they weren't the only other Birnamwood students present. They recognized some faces without being able to attach names.

Though the rich people were all in their orderly little clusters it still took some doing to get through and locate their targets. The three boys were how they'd been trained to be, conversing with every big name, making good relations before they took a table. The tables, the ones reserved for their academy, were easier to spot with tiny place cards bearing the school emblem.

One was taken, three others were not and one would remain empty when Dick and Gar had no desire to be identified.

Even in high society the waiters were trained to catch any underhandedness but Dick walked straight by one, used some slight of hand movements to stick a bug under each table like a wad of gum. He sat down next to Gar, plugged in his earpiece and waited. He continued to lay in wait as Gar ordered them drinks, a few minutes later the two Roy Rogers' were set down and Gar strained his face sucking his down through the mixing straw.

Getting nothing but absent-minded mumbles out of his partner, Gar swiped Dick's drink for himself when the ice started to melt.

"_Here_ we go," Dick said eagerly when his targets finally sat down and Gar knew then that mumbles from him would diminish into silence.

When Dick didn't care either way when engaged in his work Gar felt free to order whatever he wanted off the menu for a very long and boring stakeout. Dick didn't care even when the tiny table turned into a mountain of dishes to slake Gar's picky palate.

"Avocado sushi?" Gar offered, sticking the plate under Dick's nose.

Dick didn't even blink and even Gar thought that was going a little far. No way would a few subtle actions from the popular kids across the room be the difference between making some headway and not.

"Oh come _on_, talking to your _chair_ is more interesting than talking to you! Can't you multi-task?"

Dick blinked as if to confirm that he was still human. He reached for the plate blindly to shut his partner up when it was straining enough to hear with all the other noise to hear but as Dick did Gar looked on with surprise and then a sneaky look of delight.

Dick had pulled his sushi piece straight through the big gob of wasabi.

Every second that he watched the doomed piece get closer Gar's face got redder and puffier as he fought to keep it in. He almost didn't make it but when he saw Dick's pupils shrink to the size of pinheads he burst out laughing.

Unsuspecting, the poor boy cried out like his mouth was on fire. Gar snorted when that yell was worse than Robin getting hit in a fight; he was no help at all. Dick almost knocked the plates over looking for anything to help when it felt like the awful, too strong dosage was burning a hole through his tongue. He found an empty glass and had no second thought of downing a mouthful of ice. Gar laughed harder at his uptight leader's bulging chipmunk cheeks, laughed to the point of it hurting when Dick looked murderous in that state.

"Y-you…you lightweight!" Gar managed to get out between breathes. "Ha ha ha!"

Their noise didn't rise above any other of the clubbers but the wild commotion did and attracted the notice of their server.

"Is everything all right? Do you need anything?"

Dick couldn't speak with the ice in his cheeks but tried to anyway, tried to signal that he needed a glass of water. The server looked to Gar and Gar didn't quite feel it was over with yet after being ignored for over two hours.

"That…that's sign language for more wasabi!"

Dick's fingers clenched threateningly in the air as if itching to strange his partner in the middle of a crowded room where everyone could see but Gar didn't let him suffer for another second. He asked her to bring around some water just as quick as she could.

As soon as the server came into range Dick forgot all manners and swiped the water, chugged the whole thing in seconds.

"So how's the sleuthing going, detective?"

"Why…" Dick breathed harshly, trying for a handle on words with his abused tongue, "didn't you…_say_ something?! That had more wasabi than rice!"

"_How_ would that be funny?" Gar came back as if totally perplexed.

"I _hate_ you."

"Oh boo hoo, you hurt my feelings. It was _your_ fault for not paying attention."

But if Dick had been ignoring him before, he now ignored Gar with a vengeance so cold that Gar might well have never existed at all. A few young girls joined the table's party and proved a little harder to discern between six voices. Chuckles still rumbled in Gar's gut as he resigned himself to twirling around the little cocktail umbrellas for something to do.

It was a tiny bistro table hardly large enough for two but Gar looked round when a third chair was pulled round, a slender young brunette helping herself to a spot between the two.

"_Hey_," she said simply but enticingly. A smartly cut baby blue dress hugged her teenage frame well. "My name's Brooke. Mind if Rowan and I join you?" But her redhead friend didn't wait for an invitation either, pulling up another chair.

"H-hi," Gar offered lamely, letting them do as they pleased. It was a little too much being barred off from girls to the degree that they were, then having a couple as beautiful as they were dropping in unexpected and in such close vicinity.

"You poor dear, your face is all swelled up," Brooke simpered, running polished fingernails over his cheek in worry and tingles ran up the boy's spine at the touch. "Whatever happened to you?"

"Umm…a fight."

"Hey _handsome_," the girl Rowan said with an Irish accent on the other end. She scooted in closer to Dick, traced a nail over his shoulder. "Are you going to buy me a drink then? Think you can sneak in a little shine for me?"

"Mmm…" It wasn't even a real response to any question either way and the girl's face darkened in offense. Rowan packed up, whipped around to leave so quickly that her handbag banged into his side. He didn't notice.

"Come _on_," Dick mumbled, gripping his earpiece, like he wasn't aware as if he was thinking or speaking it, "almost there. Don't let me down now, almost there. Get to it."

Brooke couldn't help but notice and she noticed with some distaste. "What's the deal with your friend?"

"Oh…uh, him?" And Gar's mind raced for an excuse, came up with one instantly to get her attention back to him. "He's…listening to the football game over a wireless. Dick's a real big Knights fan, you wouldn't believe."

"Hmm…" But Brooke didn't seem overly concerned for long. She turned her full attention back to Gar and he almost trembled when she brushed back a stray lock of his hair. "You're a _cute_ little thing, aren't you? I just _had_ to come over and talk to you."

"Y-yeah? Wait, you don't mean little brother "cute" do you? Because I get that a lot and-"

"No," she purred.

"Sweet!" Gar scooted in closer, hardly feeling self conscious in front of Dick when his friend was practically a zombie anyway. He turned off the communicator in his pocket all so that one of the Titans couldn't call at the worst possible time and anxiously awaited her sweet voice.

"So you were in a big, bad fight were you um…what was your name?"

"Gar."

"Silly me, skipping right over proper introductions." She helped herself to a piece of vegetarian sushi from the many plates and Gar didn't protest. "So you're from Birnamwood Academy? I assume you're a freshman? You don't seem completely adjusted to the place."

"Wait, how did you know I was from the academy? I'm not wearing the uniform and I-"

Brooke giggled like he'd said the cutest thing. "Because I'm from Cherrywood…the girl's academy down in the valley? It's only a couple miles away from your hill, didn't you know?"

"_No_." Gar shot an annoyed look to his oblivious partner who watched the popular kids table like a hawk watches a meadow for a mouse to scurry into view. The other sex forbidden to him in that place had been so near and he'd never known.

"So what kinds of stuff do you like, Gar?"

"Yes!" After eavesdropping so long with nothing to show, Dick couldn't hold back a little excitement when finally he got something.

"Touchdown!' said Gar right after, rooting an arm upward to keep up appearances in front of the girl. Dick sent a confused look his way. "Uh…football?" he said, getting back to Brooke. "And Batman, he's pretty cool; I mean you'd have to have some interest in him if you're visiting Gotham."

"You're only _visiting_ Gotham?"

"Yeah…" he hesitated in having to tell a lie to a girl that seemed interested. "My dad travels a lot with the work he does so we never stay in one place very long."

"Then I won't get to see you hardly at all?" She might've been coming on a little fast but Gar understood completely when girls like that were stuffed up in those academies for most of the year. He'd have never been able to survive it. "Will you be here next week at least?"

"I'm not sure." With the way things were going Gar really wasn't. They hadn't gotten any strong leads for the longest time but depending on what Dick had just overheard that might change.

"Then why don't you come over to my dorm room tonight?" she pressed. "Your friend can come too. I snuck in some DVD's we can watch on my laptop and my roommate's real quiet. It's just…I've been waiting for some time out all week and it's almost over already."

He was in the same boat as her but somehow had the mind that the severe punishments he'd receive from _both_ academies might cripple him from returning to superhero life afterward.

Brooke seemed to translate most of what was playing in Gar's mind without him having to speak up. "It's okay, our chauffeur's easily bribed. After I go through check in you can sneak around back and I'll let you in. You can go back to your own school through the woods before the morning bells the next day."

"Well…"

'Please?"

"I…I can't," he needed to say and he saw her deflate. "I'm really reaching my threshold for punishment since I enrolled. If we were to get caught, if an inspector was to drop in…"

"They _rarely_ do late at night," And Brooke was flat, seeing where this was going.

"It's just that I think a lot of cocky kids have probably thought that _they_ were the one exception to the rule. I already have a black eye so I'm not feeling particularly lucky today."

The girl shook her head and huffed. With his claim her night was rapidly reaching its end. "Here I thought you were a tough guy getting into fight. I can find someone else _easily_, _Gar_, and I think you know that well. Someone that doesn't have a puffed up face!"

In that Brooke had been so much closer to success than her girlfriend Rowan her departure was more vengeful. She actually whacked his shoulder with her purse for making her go home alone. He was sorry to see her go but she only went a couple feet before stopping.

Gar looked her way and stiffened at the sight of new guests surely not on the list coming through the front doors: several armed women dressed in ritzy leotards and two five foot birds with bad tempers.

"Uh…Dick?" When Brooke didn't move at the sight of the birds poking into the faces of Gotham elite Gar reeled her back in to protect her.

"Not now. They're getting all excited on the other line."

"It's kind of important."

"Ladies and gentleman of Gotham," The voice was refined like all others in attendance but the short figure that huddled through the front door had a large, beaked nose and monocle that gave him away as an infamous criminal. "Forgive me please for the interruption."

Hearing the conceited voice of the Penguin again made Dick finally pull away from his work; he made a subtle move to his pocket for his communicator and pushed a silent alarm for the Bat.

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Eww, eww, eww, wasabi! Why don't I just chug a beaker of acid instead!? And nobody diss my favorite girl's name Rowan please. It's Irish, the biggest nationality percentage in my American Mutt blood, and I love it even when everyone around me thinks otherwise.

Arual-san


	10. Chapter 10

Yea action! Isn't that what comics are all about?

Arual-san

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The poor rich people in Café Brenda gathered in clusters, frightened like chickens when family of foxes had invaded their coop and just as useful.

With a crooked smile the Penguin continued, "I am in the midst of collecting for my fundraiser to preserve the endangered birds of this world. I have two fine specimens of Casuarius Casuarius – so nice they named it twice – to persuade goodwill. Popo, Chico!"

Called by name the two massive cassowaries screeched their loudest and people covered their heads in fear.

"The former place visited was most generous. Now, if you please"–the stout man unveiled a large bag–"watches, necklaces, cold hard cash, anything to preserve the survival of our feathered friends. Give till it hurts."

His tuxedoed assistants strolled through the crowds with guns and bags while the shaggy black birds did the same, only needing their natural borne weapons of beaks and claws like curved daggers to persuade donations. The bags were filled up fast.

Seeing nearby a woman being forced to give up her engagement ring, Dick's eyebrows creased. She was a young thing and had probably only just gotten married. That was all the defiance he would show however as he reached for his wallet and held it high.

"Gar, Brooke," he said from the corner of his mouth and Gar was surprised that he'd been paying attention enough to know her name. "Hand over everything you've got. We don't need any trouble."

Though it went against every instinct he had, Gar obeyed his leader and he nudged Brooke to do the same. She was such a small, delicate thing that he had expected her to be shaking down to her matching high heels. She wasn't. Brooke rather had an undisguised look of contempt, like she wanted to do something about the robbery herself. All the older ladies present couldn't have been more different, giving up everything of value they owned if only to be spared of injury.

In the day and age they were living girls were becoming less and less the damsels of earlier days but Gar shielded her all the same when one of the cassowaries stalked up to their table, a bag around its neck. They didn't hold the title of world's most dangerous bird for nothing.

It would've been so much easier if Gar had been able to change into an exact duplicate of the imposing bird and it was yet another time he cursed that they were undercover. Dick dropped his wallet into the bag and Brooke did the same with her purse and pearl necklace.

The bird cawed at Gar to do the same, getting its bright blue face up into his.

Gar hesitated for the space of a few seconds. He didn't just look at a picture of an animal to put it into his arsenal but made a point of studying the animals he became. Although it was the world's most dangerous bird it was also an extremely shy one that should have been cowering in the corner instead of being the imposing beast it was. It only attacked after it was deliberately attacked first.

Again, it would've been easier with the bird's same vocal cords but Gar tried anyway. He'd been an ostrich before so it couldn't be that different branching out into a cousin animal language.

Dick looked over to his friend as if positive he was choking on something.

Large amber eyes were inches away from Gar's and so was its sharp beak. It tilted its head as if curious.

Gar had to keep that curiosity going when the cassowary could at any moment of its choosing decide that it didn't like a puny human making a mockery of its bird calls with terrible pronunciations. When he was sure none of the Penguin's henchmen were watching Gar continued, trying to breech the language barrier.

Brooke looked at him like he belonged in Arkham.

Pretty girl, he said in attempted in broken cassowary tongue, sure that the bird was female by its plumage. You don't want to be here, do you Chico? You'd rather be in the wild?

She gave an angry call but he was sure the anger was mostly not directed toward him. With its tiny brain even the simplified sentences Gar attempted could have been too refined for the bird.

He tried again, scanning over the many different things he'd ordered for the bird's main food source.

Gar correctly selected the plate of fruit as a peace offering. He was almost knocked off balance with the force in which the cassowary devoured it. He didn't need to inquire further to deduce that the birds were kept starved until they had pulled off heists for their master. Starvation was enough to get a shy bird to come out of its shell.

Bad man, Gar started but when the bird didn't follow he jerked his head to the Penguin until it looked and gave another angry call. He gave a thin cry to symbolize hunger, imitated the same specific angry call the bird gave when looking at the Penguin. It took some doing to get each phrase to connect in the bird brain.

Fat man…eat…food. _Their_ food.

It was of course a lie on Gar's part but once he'd put the idea into that tiny brain it charged. She seemed to be the dominant one and the male followed her lead. Doubting him before, Dick and Brooke just stared when the big birds followed Gar's suggestion. The female henchman that noticed could only stand back when the beasts were in such a rage.

"_Both_ earrings if you please, madam," the gentleman of crime insisted when the shaking, arthritic fingers of the old woman he was harassing were having trouble removing the backing of her studs.

He only heard the stomping of the clawed feet in time to pull out his umbrella in defense but still he was bowled back several feet.

"What the devil has gotten into you two?" It was a first for him, disloyalty from his beloved aviary henchman. The Bat had always found a way of disabling them without resorting to animal cruelty but he wasn't even there!

The birds hissed. They crouched low and ruffled their wing feathers, readying to attack.

"I will have no impudence." The tides had suddenly turned so that it was no longer about stealing as much as he could so much as it was teaching his pets a lesson in obedience. The birds of his namesake were hardly fierce predators in the wild but the Penguin's steely black eyes glinted as he paced round in a circle just the same as his cassowaries.

The male Popo charged first, raising his talons in a deadly kick.

The Penguin was more agile than his tubby frame suggested and he stepped aside, whacking the bird over its back with his umbrella as it passed him. If the female Chico had the smarts to think she could get a shot at him in the second his back was turn she was mistaken when the Penguin crossed his umbrella to her long neck like he was parrying swords.

He'd made sure to strike Chico's voice box so that she would be focused on the pain of it so as to not have the strength to use her talons. She still strained to peck at him but he held her back with an increasing smile. He was ready with a backup umbrella when Popo came back. It puffed out to its full lengths to protect his back and shot knock-out gas from the tip.

The Penguin however was overconfident to a point that he didn't bother to look back to see that his weapon had succeeded. Even with a brain the size of a walnut any animal was bound to learn from repeated stimuli and so Popo did.

Instead of jerking back at the sudden burst of gas Popo whipped the umbrella aside with one of his powerful claws before he could inhale more than a tiny whiff. The force of his kick knocked the Penguin to the floor and sliding into a wall while the two birds fell back to recuperate.

There was no one person in the room not focused entirely on the scene but while the innocent clubbers just stared the henchmen could stand by no longer when their boss was knocked down. They rushed down to the lower level in a hurry to guard his front.

Two of the women unlocked the safety on their guns, took on the stance to open fire, but fell over each other at a harsh swipe below from the Penguin's umbrella.

"Don't fire you twits!" he yelled in fury, radiating far more authority than they even when he came to a stand a foot and a half below them all. "They're an endangered species! I cannot say the same for henchman, obtained cheaper by the dozen!"

The Penguin declared as much in such a pitiless manner that the women cleared from his way at once so that his path to the birds would be free. He may have been more gentlemanly than most supervillians but in the end his subordinates were no less dispensable.

"Man, this doesn't look good." Gar had been biting his nails the whole time but now shifted his weight between either foot when either bird coughed and hacked for different reasons. The Penguin had just been stunned and was recovering fast.

"It would be a mistake to underestimate the Penguin," Dick said forebodingly; free to speak when the henchman weren't there to bully. "He's a genius and, as you saw firsthand, an expertise in Judo with how easily he deflected the bird's attack and used it against it."

"The tricks never end with those umbrellas of his either," Brooke mentioned in support.

"So…did I just do a bad thing?" Gar had thought that he'd been helping but just the thought of those birds getting hurt because of him made him dash from the table to help. He didn't think, he just called out to the cassowaries, "Popo!" – he drew a hand to his left – "Chico!" He drew a hand to his right and he brought them both smashing into the other, signaling to double team from both sides instead of charging head on.

They were trained birds and understood the signal but in the minute it took them to set it up the Penguin had found the thorn in his side.

"So _you_ were the one interfering with my plans?"

The Penguin whacked his umbrella in his hands as Gar came to a stop on the upper level only a couple yards away. Gar was ready, ready to duck or dodge to whatever feature came out of that umbrella, but Dick wasn't willing to risk it.

"Look out!" In the few seconds he had Dick used his incredible speed to grab their little bistro table, plates flying all around, and drop it down in front of Gar as a shield.

Three blades plunked into the wood and the boys startled back at how deep they went, Gar more startled in that he never would have been able to dodge them all.

"You, boy," the Penguin called out, addressing Dick's new face, "you look rather familiar. Have I threatened you before?"

The cassowaries had meanwhile backed up on either side of the lower level. They scratched back their claws on the expensive tiles and reared back in preparation to charge.

The boys weren't free to speak when any whisper might be picked up in such close range but Dick signaled exactly what to do when it seemed that they were cornered and the two could both barely fit behind the table.

Brooke looked on and she didn't seem to think it was enough. She gave a scream loud enough to shatter glass and out of instinct all in the club looked to her, including the Penguin. The boys seized the seconds-long distraction to pull up the table and lunge it over the side. The Penguin aimed his umbrella but too late and he was slammed down again more harshly than before. This time he hadn't the time to get up again before his prized pets were over him kicking and pecking at him without fail.

The henchman, forbidden to use weapons on the birds, could only watch. A few of them, particularly the ones who had been knocked over before, took their bags of loot and ran. They were armed and so the boys couldn't stop them.

The police however could and did, backing them right back past the doors into the club, handcuffs ready.

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"Defeated by my own pets!" the Penguin shouted in rage for the entire city to hear as he was shoved into the back of a Police van. "And _children_ – a couple of little hooligans! _Next_ time I'll bring poison-beaked hummingbirds – do you hear me Popo, Chico, you nasty beasts!?"

But in the streets outside Café Brenda the cassowaries were none too concerned at their former master being hauled away in chains, made no attempt to break him free. They rather had seemed to have developed a soft spot for Gar while Animal Control was still a bit behind the police, Popo resting his tired head on the boy's crown, Chico nipping at his shoulder affectionately.

"Yeah, yeah, don't get all mushy on me, girl," Gar said mildly, stroking the horn-like casque on her head in a way that made her thrum similarly to a cat's purr. He seemed to be like catnip for the giant birds that no one else wanted to be anywhere near.

"I'll be sure to come visit you guys at the zoo sometime, okay?"

Dick smirked at taking that in from the corner of his eye. He had mixed into a small group of informants in the crowd, explaining the situation to the police and to Batman, who had been in the middle of handling a bank robbery when he'd been summoned.

Brooke had gotten back together with her friends but she still stood out a little way taking in how effortlessly Gar bonded with the deadly birds like they were a couple of Golden Retrievers. Her face was warped in disbelief like a wax sculpture left to melt in the sun.

"Animal magnetism," Gar said cheerily when her bedazzled expression left her mute. "I know how much you girls like animals so I'll just," – he produced a piece of paper from his pocket, jotted down his number and slipped it in her open purse – "keep this with you."

Her friends seemed to flip back to business quicker than she and dragged Brooke along with the crowd back to their limousines.

Gar looked after her with more confidence than the last time she'd left but his cool exit for the night was not to last when the Animal Control pulled in and its workers stepped out.

He found his feet leaving the ground.

"_Hey!_" yelled Gar, harassed, kicking his feet in the air to help him turn around to where Chico was getting herded into a van. "I am _not_ a puppy at the pound you can just adopt! Put me down!"

Batman was less than pleased hearing the recount of how things had gone down. "I don't know how many times I've stressed _civilians_" – he gave a scolding look to his ward too swift for anyone else to notice – "that they are under no circumstances to take the law into their own hands."

"Dick!" Gar called out in distress.

Without his uniform Dick was barred from giving a cocky reply but even in his silence, his obedient nod, his true feelings to the Bat had surely not gone unnoticed. Fools tried to be heroes every day…they had just been two civilians that had happened to succeed.

"_Dick!_ Get over here and help me you jerk!"

When Dick had decided he'd had enough filling in Batman over what had happened, when he decided that the rest could be a matter of expenses with the restaurant owners, he walked away, not to his partner but back into the café.

Gar growled and tried running in the air, using the momentum to break free of Chico's firm hold on the scruff of his shirt. His struggles made little difference to the bird's grip and it just kept walking until…

"Chico, come here, girl."

The great bird turned and Gar with her to see that Dick had returned from the kitchens with two halves of a melon. Popo was already devouring one half and the juicy melon in his other hand was bare.

Gar felt the bird pace in place. She could only use her mouth for one thing and her stomach won out. Despite her great hunger, Chico placed Gar down gently when she joined her mate eating the melon.

Two melons were a little hard for one person to hold for two hungry giant birds so Gar relieved Dick of one.

"That was kind of stupid of me, wasn't it?"

"You really don't need me to tell you that, Gar." Dick sighed but it was what he'd come to expect of his quirky little friend. "Congrats though, you helped take down one of Gotham's most elite villains all without the use of your powers."

"What about the popular kids? Did I…blow our cover?"

"They were cowering under the table the whole time. In fact," Dick nudged his head to a side and Gar saw the three leaving down the sidewalk. While Bradley and Chad stuck with the group of Cherrywood girls Regis parted off alone with his bodyguard and Gar felt he had to ask why. He would think that with how the academy boys were barred off from contact with girls the boys would jump at the opportunity to spend a night where those Cherrywood girls would be the primary theme.

"Regis has the habit of never wanting to risk his own neck even if it would most likely be excused under the category of being traumatized from the night's events," Dick explained. He continued in a lower voice, "Plus he likes guys."

"Yeah?" Gar said offhandedly to himself as he watched the lone boy rush away with too much excitement for the day. "Has he…" – Gar snickered – "ever tried hitting on you?"

Although the melon was doing much to pacify the cassowaries Dick pulled it away, feeling it was better served smashed in Gar's mocking face. Popo wasn't discouraged and continued licking the melon juice off Gar's cheek.


	11. Chapter 11

Thanks to Thiefy17 for looking this chapter over first for editing.

Arual-san

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The majority of the boys had gone out the girls from Cherrywood that night. The few that had returned from downtown that night had been returned their valuables but were visibly shaken and wanted nothing more than to bed down for the night and forget about the night's events.

Frazzled nerves were the furthest thing from the minds of Dick and Gar.

"_Woooo! We got a lead!_"

"Indoor voice, BB," Dick had to remind him though he couldn't conceal a smug grin off his face. The little earpiece that was the source of their good feelings he set back in his kit for another day. The way he'd been waiting for this lead he'd memorized every word.

"_Who_ had a _good_ idea?" Gar continued in a loud whisper, pumping his chest up like some of the brawnier superheroes.

"_You_ did," Dick said shaking his head but in resigned praise.

"And _who_ took down the Penguin?" Gar pressed, bumping into Dick purposely and almost knocking him off balance to milk that fortunate night for all it was worth. "_Who_ took him down instead of the big, bad Bat?"

"The cassowaries," Dick teased just to see him puff up in indignation.

"Yeah, because _I_ told them too!"

"I know, I know, because _you_ told them too." Dick couldn't deny his friend that he had been the better non-super superhero downtown. "You've had some very inspired ideas tonight, Gar. I've got to say I'm impressed."

"_However_," Dick continued, cutting short Gar's self-praise boogie dance, and some bit of his cheer was replaced with sternness, "charging in to give the commands to the birds without any means of protection was _not_ an inspired idea."

"But, but Chico and Popo-"

"Would have only received a few flesh wounds at the most," Dick finished for him in a decidedly different way. "The Penguin values his birds a great deal more than people. You saw that in the way he treated his henchman. Letting your heart cloud your head in this business can get you killed."

Though Dick hadn't said it directly, Gar's thoughts wandered to Terra, how the Titans had tried so hard to bring her back only to have her throw it all back in their faces and nearly kill them all in the process. It had been a long, painful journey that should not have ended the way it did. Every superhero needed to find his or her balance between heart and mind. Batman was his hero and his idol but despite that Gar had no intention of locking away that heart that made him human the way the Bat did. There was always a line.

Cheer had a way of crumbling down into guilt over how Gar had probably alarmed his partner with such a rash act. Even as fast as he was, if Dick had been a couple seconds slower…

"I um…sorry."

"It's fine. Just take a second thought in these things before you go barging in." Dick hadn't enjoyed bringing down Gar's good mood even with the scolding he deserved so he made a point of bringing it back up again. "The bug…"

"Yeah, yeah, the bug!" Gar beamed, glad for the news. "What happened? What did you hear?"

"There's a "Model U.N." meeting this Saturday that I'm inviting myself to." The way he repeated the next bits of information of the exact time, place, dress code and how someone one minute late would not be allowed admittance Dick was probably saying it all word for word.

"Regis seemed much more secretive of this topic than any other one discussed," Dick continued. "I'm sure it's not an innocent gathering. I can convince him that my connections are better than he perceived and get in, I think, without being refused admittance."

"Sweet. Good luck, man."

"It's a meeting rather late in the evening, eight-thirty. Most students will be involved with their organizations that day and most professors will be grading papers for the weekend. While everyone's distracted I'm going to need you to skip your Wizards and Warlords night to do some detective work."

"Lame," Gar muttered. His mood kept going up and down like a metronome. "I've been waiting for that night all week."

"Though I'm going to be recording the meeting's proceedings from beginning to end you can be sure the lawyers these guys have are going to be the best. You can be sure they'll fabricate their own little stories to protect their clients. Any evidence we can get against them will be to our advantage."

"So what are you saying?"

"I'm saying I want you to do a couple "break-ins": one to their separate rooms, one to the Permanent Records office."

"Isn't that against the law?"

"We're _bending_ the law to preserve the law," Dick clarified. "As long as you don't leave a trace no one will ever know you were there. All we have to do is claim to have a source that wishes to remain anonymous. If we have all the right information from such a "source" it breeds distrust among people. A disloyal friend is a much easier story to buy than a boy that can turn into insects and slip under doors." He gave a cocky smirk to his friend. "In court these rich boys will be more likely to look out for number one and score a better deal with authorities by volunteering further information."

Dick continued on with barely a breath in between. He spread out a map of the academy and marked three spots. "Regis and Chad are bunked together in Room 34 and Bradley shares a room with another boy in Room 20. The Records office is here," –he pointed- "a few corridors away. You're not going to have very much time to search each place but try to be as thorough as you can."

"Uh Robin?" Gar asked, raising his hand like he was in class. "Is there any part of this plan where I steal back my uniform? It's the only one I brought."

"Unfortunately no." It was the one nick in his plan. "Anything that's confiscated from the dorms is dumped into the furnace."

"_Super_," Gar returned, voice heavy with sarcasm. "Can I borrow yours then?"

"You already know I can't let you do that." Dick crossed his arms, sorry for having to be stingy. "If any of the actions we've done before were thought of as suspicious you getting caught in a Robin suit would be a fifty-foot red flag."

"Who says I'm going to get caught?"

Dick didn't even try to humor him on that one. "My uniform is easily recognizable and not to mention very bright. Quite frankly, I don't think you're stealthy enough to operate in it without getting caught."

"Plus you don't want me "adjusting" it to fit my shape-shifting needs."

"That's beside the point," Dick said, moving right along though secretly glad he didn't have to sacrifice a uniform in such a way. "You said you needed something skin-tight to trick your ability into thinking its skin? Is there anything at all you can use as a substitute for your uniform?"

"Uhh…"

"Did you _really_ not bring a backup uniform? I'm always telling you to be prepared for everything."

"How was I supposed to know some crazy disciplinarian school was going to confiscate it!?"

"I'd lend you something of mine if I had anything useful to give," Dick said and he asked again if there was any chance of a substitution. If he knew Gar it was probable that the boy had only lazily unpacked half of his suitcase from their last trip to Tokyo then left it to collect dust in his closet.

Gar pulled along his heavy suitcase with his skinny arms and it dumped it onto the floor. When it hit the floor it disturbed the contents and a couple moths fluttered out in panic, earning Gar a stern glare from his partner.

The tightest things they found were a plain white t-shirt and a pair of cotton gym shorts. When Gar didn't even bother to try on the moth-bitten things Dick rightly assumed that they were still too loose to ever work.

"Well darn," But Gar was instead giddy with excitement. "I guess I'm going to have to go to that Wizards and Warlords game."

"You signed on for this mission without my permission," Dick reminded him. "I'm still leader. I call the shots here."

"You are _not_ making me do this in only my tighty-whiteys!" And it was one of the rare times intimidation would not work from a more imposing teammate. "I'm _not_ doing it! Not for you and not for anyone else! If I got caught in human form-!"

"I'm just saying I'm not letting you give up on this so easily. You've had some good brainstorming today; think you pull it off one more time?"

But instead of being inspired Gar seemed more to deflate at the thought of pulling off something smart again. It was just too much work doing that all the time and he didn't see how Cyborg with his computers and vehicles, Raven with her books and Robin with his…well everything, didn't ever blow a circuit overloading their brains with information.

Still, even though Gar was sure his well was dried up that day he sat down next to his friend to brainstorm any possible solutions.

Ten minutes went by…

"Hey, I know!" Gar said as if he'd uncovered a great idea. "I can wear the briefs but throw some black paint over the rest of me. It'll be like I'm a ninja or something and-"

One glare from Dick shut him right up.

Another ten minutes…

"How about the holographic generator?" Gar suggested a little more hesitantly, holding out the rings on his fingers. "Maybe we can program it to bend light and make me invisible and-?"

"That device is a very sensitive piece of equipment," Dick headed off before Gar could elaborate further. "If we were to deviate outside its normal range of functions, stress its miniscule controls in the wrong way, we could very well break it."

"Cyborg's only a call away, you know."

"Go ahead and call him then. Call him and tell him you lifted one of his prize creations without permission, that you need help rewiring the tiny thing with your clumsy hands."

Another idea shot down and Gar was shot down with it. "Well…when you put it like that."

After two rejected ideas the boys sat on the floor in relative silence for another thirty minutes, Dick glaring at the floor as if lost in his thoughts, Gar jiggling his leg around as if by getting the blood flowing he'd get the ideas going.

"Could we…" Gar tried in lack of any other ideas, "use duct tape in place of clothes?"

"I think it's safe to say your muse of before is dead. _Long_ dead."

"Well at least I'm contributing!"

"I haven't said anything because nothing good has come to mind yet," Dick responded, ready for the retort. "We could sew the shirt and shorts smaller if we had a kit…but I'm not very good at sewing and we probably wouldn't be able to pull it off sloughing the material up in bunches. I don't really want you "borrowing" anything from one of our dorm neighbors either."

"Why not?" Gar wanted to know. "You're having me do break-ins anyway."

"Not with the intent to steal. And I'm only condoning break-ins at all because of lack of success in other evidence searches."

"So if you're so quick to dismiss every idea that comes to mind what do you suggest we _do?_"

"I think we…" Dick was hesitant, not wanting it to come to this when he was supposed to be the leader with all the ideas, "need to call someone for advice, another Titan. Preferably a girl, they'd probably be able to figure something like this out better than us."

Normally Gar would've seized this chance to mock his leader for drawing a blank instead of concocting a perfect plan but he was just too tired of thinking to protest. "Anyone in particular in mind? I think most of the girls we know might take offense if we assumed knowledge like this was inborn to their gender. You know, that whole perfect housewife thing of the fifties?"

"Hmm…" There were much less Titan girls than guys and he felt he had to tick each of them off by finger. "Starfire wouldn't be a good bet and Raven would probably hang up on us, so no one from the original team. Who else…Jinx or Argent? They'd both probably get just as steamed as Raven."

Gar brightened. "You could always call Batgirl."

"_Not_ calling Batgirl," he said quickly. No further explanation was given but none was needed when Dick was still probably a little reluctant to call her after their fight without a real emergency. "Girls, girls…oh Bumblebee!" he came to at once, almost surprising himself. "She's perfect! She's the only girl of Titans East; since Speedy and the twins are slobs and Aqualad spends most of his time in the ocean she's probably got to whip them into action to keep the Tower in ship shape."

"Bee _does_ act like a babysitter sometimes," Gar had to admit when he thought of their rowdy sister team. "_Most_ times."

When it had been decided that Bumblebee was the one to call the boys quickly got back into their uniform look: Gar undid the hologram over him so he was Beast Boy again and Dick messed up his hair and put his mask back on to assume his role as Robin. Not being a member of the original Titans, Bumblebee didn't have a speed-dial like the rest of their team did; Dick ejected his communicator's number pad to type in her three digit number.

The boys waited and the Titans East leader didn't have them wait long.

In place of a greeting, the first thing the chocolate-skinned girl did was yawn. Though they were less than thirty minutes away from Steel City by jet it was still getting late. Bumblebee looked every bit the normal teenager getting ready for bed: her dark hair was down and her pajamas were printed with none other than chubby, striped bumblebees.

"Oh hey," she said upon opening her eyes again. "Robin, Beast Boy, nice to see you guys. What's up?"

"Hey Bee, we err…need some advice."

"Whaaat? The great Boy Wonder is asking advice from little ol' me?" She grunted and sipped from her big mug of tea. "What's next, our girl Raven painting her room pink and wearing sundresses?"

"More like um…well…" Robin struggled with how to approach it, the right way to say it as Bumblebee waited.

"Womanly advice?" Gar murmured in his most sheepish voice yet.

Bumblebee just about choked on her next sip of tea and burst out laughing over how solemnly the boys had been acting. "W-womanly advice?" she repeated when she was fit enough to talk through her chuckles. "You boys trying to get in touch with your feminine side? That's kind of sweet."

"Not exactly."

"Hold up," she said perking right up and plowing right on. When she perked up her insect wings did too, dispelling the former image of a normal teenage girl. "Where are you two anyway? That doesn't look like the tower and you aren't wearing your uniforms."

"We're on an undercover mission apart from the rest of the Titans."

"Undercover mission where?"

"Nevermind," said Robin, hardly wanting to get into every detail. "The thing is Beast Boy lost his only uniform and it's an important piece to have if he's going to be transforming."

"Yeah?" she looked from Robin to Beast Boy with mocking eyes. "So how'd you lose your uniform, BB?"

His green face flattened, completely fine in skipping over that part. "Uh…_bears_."

"Uh-huh, sure, fine, _"bears"_. All you had to do was say you didn't want to talk about it. So you need a replacement then, I take it? Your tracker says you're in…Gotham City? Well we're close by. Want us to drop you off some supplies?"

"Not a good idea." They were confined to the grounds for another full week and couldn't chance the academy discovering any unexpected visitors. "Can you just work with us here? We've got very limited resources and we need to find a way of making this-" – he held out the ratty uniform – "fit BB with no clearance in between."

"Yeah," Beast Boy said glumly, "I've kind of got the feeling that using a toothpick and floss in place of needles and thread isn't going to work."

"Oh-ho, so this is about me playing a traditional female role, is it? How do you know that I know anything about clothes? Maybe I send everything to the dry cleaners or just throw out my clothes when they get dirty so I can buy new ones."

They could probably expect to get backtalk from any Titan girl they asked about this but Bumblebee didn't go far in telling them off when they were stuck like they were.

"Just shrink the uniform."

"That's just it," Robin plowed on, not looking into it deeper, "we need it to be able to shrink and enlarge as Beast Boy transforms and-"

"No, throw it in the wash and shrink it. You do have a washing machine over there, don't you?"

"Oh…yeah, we do." And Robin was tempted to adjust the camera view so she couldn't see him kick himself for not thinking of that.

"Haven't you guys ever shrunk anything by accident in the wash to think of that?"

Either of the boys blinked on being asked that question. They looked to the other and then back to Bumblebee to explain.

Robin went first. "My uniform is comprised of an advanced and resilient type of fiber that repels all foreign elements of dirt and odor. It also has a way of pulling together sibling fibers to repair small cuts and scrapes. I only need to bother replacing them when they get completely shredded."

"A very Robin answer." Bumblebee rolled her eyes. "Okay, BB, what's your excuse?"

"Uh…well, you see, I can't really afford to be washing my uniforms very often when I have to rub my skin raw to ingrain my skin cells into them." He hesitated at every step, looked away from them both, but couldn't stop now. "I…don't wash them. I spray them down, squeeze them out and hang them up to dry."

"Eww…" Bumblebee shivered at the very thought and Robin wasn't any more approving.

"Well sorry if my powers take a little maintenance!"

"Do you ever find nests of bugs in your uniforms?" Robin asked flatly, again reminding himself never to touch one of BB's uniforms.

"That's why I use cleaning fluid and bug spray."

"Well what about before you came to the tower?" Bumblebee continued on. "Before you guys did this whole thing of snuffing out your alter-egos, what then?"

"It was someone else's job," the boys said in unison.

"Hah! You guys are nuts, you know that? But I'll help you anyway." Once they'd gotten down to the laundry room they switched her back on. "Okay, so you're going to have to turn the water to its hottest setting. Since you only have a couple things add something else to balance the load, a towel or something."

"How much detergent?"

"I don't know, just eyeball it."

Robin raised a doubtful eyebrow. "I'd prefer to get exact specifications. We only have one shot to get this right."

"Ugh, like a half cup, okay? It doesn't matter, as long as the water's hot and the dryer's hot. Drip dry any extra moisture and it should lose a few sizes." She'd given them as good as advice as they were going to get. She set her arm akimbo. "Any more wacky late-night requests I can fulfill?"

"No, that's good," Robin said but his partner echoed, "But we'll keep you posted, Bee. Thanks!"

The result from their first time shrinking clothing was a set of clothes even Beast Boy had to squeeze his scrawny little frame into. Black shorts stained the color of the white tee to a murky gray and it pinched so much in certain areas they had to take a scissors to it so blood circulation wouldn't be cut off.

And there was always the chunks eaten away by the moths…

Robin finished the ghastly ensemble by sticking one of his masks on Beast Boy's face: the only item of his he'd permit his friend to borrow.

Beast Boy didn't even need to look in the mirror to be certain that it was the worst cat burglar costume ever. He didn't say as much aloud though for it would just be another invitation for Robin to tell him that this was another lesson to be learned.


	12. Chapter 12

Yea, I just got my gallon pin at Memorial Blood. That's like a jug of apple cider worth; I'm so nice indulging those nagging vampires so much. Hee hee. : )

So this is for those wanting me to get back to the other Titans but this is the last time excluding some possible cameos so please no more asking. This is a friendship fic about Robin and Beast Boy and I'd like to focus on them. Not that Raven isn't really cool though.

Onto the Raven chapter!

Arual-san

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A heavy, calming mist curled tendrils along the meadow like a heavy, weightless blanket. The grass below was still without a breeze and thick with morning dew over the waterfall it rested over. There was no other life to be seen in the couple feet visible around in the mist and there was only the steady sound of the rushing water below.

Raven hovered there with closed eyes in the meditative world that was hers alone a thousand miles away from all earthy concerns.

"Azerath, Metrion, Zinthos…"

Here, where she could be alone with her thoughts, nothing else mattered, nothing else existed outside that tiny corner of her mind. Everything was right within her little world, everything at peace.

A deafening pitch of electric guitar screeched like streak of lightning across the sky.

Her eyes had been peaceably closed but they opened slowly, forebodingly, and as Raven's concentration ebbed what was similar to a fissure to a stone cracked through the imagined landscape. Raven stood as her world came tumbling down around her and the flurry of the rest of her mind came fluttering in to fill the blank: all those other aspects of her personalities, squabbling to be heard all at once. Fighter Raven ordered that she commandeer Robin's empty training room for herself while he was gone, Bookworm Raven wanted to read until her eyeballs fell out and rolled across the floor, Jealous Raven pouted over her short violet hair, wishing she could grow it long like Starfire's.

Two cried out louder than all the rest and those voices that were hers rang through her skull.

"Rae-Rae, this room of ours is _so_ gloomy!" Girly Raven whined in her giggly, feminine tone that squeaked much too high. "It's totally bumming me out! You've got to let the light in and get some stuffed animals – ooo, ooo, I saw the _cuuutest_ penguin when we were passing by Jump's toy store the other day, it-!"

"Smite those fools who would dare interrupt your mediation!" Angry Raven demanded in her harsh growl of a voice. "Smite them into dust and take the satisfaction of seeing them roll away on the breeze! Take your vengeance, take your-!"

"-had this sweet little bowtie to go along with its little tuxedo! Ooo, I _want_ it! I'll name him Sir Waddlesworth and-!"

"-rage! Take your rightful place as overlord in place of that heap of mortal flesh and scrap metal! They will _obey_ you, they will _fear_ you-!"

"_SHUT UP!_" the original Raven yelled as loud as she could when they were swarming her at all sides like a horde of ravenous rats. As loud as she yelled her voice still drowned in the sea of Ravens and so she needed to get her point across.

"Isn't Beast Boy just the funniest?" swooned a Lovesick Raven. "Or Aqualad, hee, I'd melt with him any day!"

"Go ahead then!" Raven growled back, landing a kick to Lovesick Raven's jaw. The other Raven had a look of surprise register for a second before she melted away, banished to the far reaches of the girl's mind.

"_Waaahh!_" cried Melancholy Raven, sniffling and sobbing like the world was going to end. "D-don't talk about Beast Boy! I – I m-miss him and Robin _SO_ much! W-what if they never come back? W-what if they don't _like_ me any more? What if-?"

"Whine about it in a different lobe!" Raven came back without pity, banishing her as well. She kicked and shoved them all back until she had just a couple seconds where none of them were in contact with her at all.

Without that interference Raven pushed herself out from the inner expanses of her mind.

She gasped when she landed back in her dark and gothic room. She neither liked nor could afford very often to come back to reality in such an immediate and harsh manner – it was a stress no less equal to falling off a building, falling back into her physical form that way.

Once she'd allowed herself a few moments to breathe, Raven uncrossed her legs and touched down to the floor.

It was vibrating. She looked to where she had placed her runes book on the floor to find it had moved a couple centimeters from where she had placed it from the intensity of the waves coursing through the floor.

If the music had been a loud hum from behind her shut door Raven braced herself like bracing an oncoming tide. She opened the door and the full volume rock music, Starfire's off-pitch wailing to the beat, nearly blasted her back into her bookshelf.

Her cloak whipped behind her like a pirate's flag that would take no prisoners.

When Raven entered the main den if anything her fury had escalated with rigid shoulders and a breathy exhale like a bull about to charge. This was the _fifth_ time this week she'd been interrupted so harshly from her mediation.

The seizure-inducing kaleidoscope of bright colors that was Pop Band flashed across the wide screen while Cyborg and Starfire sweat to match its insane speed of beats and lyrics. As into it as he was, Cyborg stomped along the floor with his guitar, matching the strokes with his own deep "Dah, dah, dah!", while Starfire beamed like a real singer before thousands of adoring fans.

"My kitty baby lollipop, she like to rock, she never stop!" Starfire sang to the sugary, poorly translated lyrics. "Su-pa kitty cat! Karate chop all day!" she cheered with the cat-eared Japanese schoolgirl. "Su-pa kitty cat, we bite and fight, blast bad guys a-way!"

Raven fumed with such a presence that touching her might have flayed a person's skin.

"Hey Rae!" Cyborg greeted in good cheer, taking a half second from his strums to acknowledge her.

"Friend Raven!" beamed Starfire, dragging the other girl in to the source of the noise that shook the whole tower. "You must sing with me on the next verse – the one about the superhero feline's fluffy tail that emits sonic waves! We will get the Superstar Power!"

"Su…per…her…o…cat?" Raven seethed through her teeth.

"Yes, is it not marvelous? I was not aware that animals could be superheroes the same as we are and look so very cute doing it! There! Look there, Raven!" Thinking it was real, she pointed to a caped kitten taking down some Godzillas stomping a plastic city. "It's Kawaii Neko-chan!"

Raven's head bowed from the screen. Her hands started to shake but not from the game's vibration.

"Oh how I would love to meet such a cat! Here is the next verse, Raven, we-"

"No man, the console!" The sight of it hovering in a sphere of dark energy instantly changed Cyborg's cheer into fear.

Starfire started but her powers couldn't stop its destruction. "No, Raven, please do not take the life of our X-ed Box!"

The way she was going Raven probably had every intention to do that very thing, to rip the annoying down until it was only bare circuits, to erase that absurd music video from the screen and get back to her meditation. It would give her much satisfaction indeed. The other two abandoned their guitar and microphone and tried to beg her not to destroy it but before anything could be decided the alarms in the tower went off.

There was trouble in the city and at near midnight.

Raven dropped the console from her control and Cyborg dove to save it like he was rescuing his first-born son.

"I have _this_ call," Raven informed them in a low and deadly voice.

"But Raven, you have already responded alone to many previous calls and-"

"Previous calls? You mean those _five_ previous calls exactly?"

"Yes those," Starfire squeaked, frightened like all the Titans knew they should be when Raven was like this. She and Cyborg could only stare after their friend as she left the tower alone to a call that could have been as low-key as a couple of no-name thugs robbing a convenience store or as major league as Brother Blood resurfacing with the Hive Academy. She hadn't a grain of doubt.

Like a ghostly specter Raven coasted inches above the ocean water that separated their island from the mainland and with a deadly purpose. Whoever the call had been summoned for would bear the brunt of the would-be demolished X-Box.

That time would come in minutes but that was too long for her to wait and she whipped out her communicator.

Every time it rang, every second longer she had to wait, made her angrier.

She heard the sound of Robin grunting and groaning himself awake like it pained him to do so. A brief flash of his mask appeared and she heard the sound of him sticking it to his face before he pulled the screen to him.

"Raven," Robin said vaguely, only a quarter awake. He yawned. "It's late and we have to get up early. Could you call back t-?"

His eyelids perked back a little though when he saw the mood she was in. This was not of the same caliber Gar had had to endure but several days worth of anguish that was primarily his fault for not being there and not being leader.

It was too easy to tease Gar but now that it was directed toward him Robin had to go against his instincts to cower from the vicious demon that wore human skin.

"Uh…weren't you guys…having fun watching movies?" he tried, knowing it would be futile.

"_WHEN_ are you coming back!?" Raven demanded with no form of greeting whatsoever.

He startled back at her rage, nearly hitting his head against the bed's banister. "S-soon…?"

"_How_ soon!?

"I…uh…_really_ soon?" He scratched his neck, figuring he ought to get the jist of the situation if he was going to be awake. "Are you…having a bad day, Raven? Isn't Cyborg doing a good job as a leader?"

"Our new leader?" Raven grunted. "Since you're such a stern dictator, Cyborg's made a point of reinstating everything you've banned. The team may be put together when we're in public but it's a madhouse in the tower. Those two do whatever they want, _when_ ever they want. We've been watching R-rated movies and Starfire keeps waking us up with nightmares. There's a slice of pizza on the ceiling that's _still_ there! They're loading squirt guns up with ketchup and playing Cops and Robbers. And they're pranking _me_ for not joining in!"

"It…can't be that bad."

"They dumped three bottles of Bubble Monster into my bath. _All_ I could see was _foam_."

"Uh…"

"They glued together all 563 pages of one of my books."

"Well, Raven," he started matter-of-factly, "if you'd just stop being such a buzzkill and join in more they probably wouldn't-"

"Are you saying this is _my_ fault?"

"Did I say that?" Robin came back a little defensively. "I didn't say that!"

"Every time I try to say something about it Cyborg asks me who the leader is. That's right, it's _not_ me," she said sarcastically as if it was a joke that never got old. "Just finish up with your mission and get _back_ here. And _please_ take care to lose Beast Boy along the way." She lifted one of her hands to the screen to reveal that Starfire had glued bunny decals to her nails. "I've _really_ had enough."

"Heh, I'll work on that," Robin said but without an ounce of humor. By the sound of it Raven was quite possibly having just as tough a time as them where life was anarchy as opposed to where the boys were where there was nothing _but_ rules.

"Anyway," he continued when Raven had paused to huff out some of her frustration, "I'm about to crack this case wide open. I'll be back in no more than a couple days so just hold out a little longer. Things will be back to normal soon enough."

For so long Raven's feet had skimmed along the surface of the water but she pulled up on reaching the shore. In the city she raised her altitude to avoid obstacles like people and stoplights but she did not adjust her speed.

"……Sorry."

"What?"

"I'm sorry for snapping at you…for waking you up," Raven said, breathing in, doing what she needed to do. "You can't control what happens at the tower when you're not here and you probably have a full enough plate as it is."

"It's nothing, Raven. _Really_." He had to convince her when she might feel guilty for it later. "I know you're upset and that you can't channel it with meditation when those two are milking this offsite mission of mine for all it's worth. It's almost over."

Raven sighed. "Yeah. Raven out."

She still had several minutes more of flying before she reached the destination text messaged to the Titans by the police. She'd switched off her communicator anyway to really stop and feel the air rushing by as if it could calm her nerves.

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Even if they hadn't been the only ones out on the town as very late as they were the Hive Five would have stood out like eels among goldfish with their eccentric looks: Mammoth with his caveman appearance and massive build, See-More with his single oversized eye, the ever silent phantom Kyd Wykkyd and Billy Numerous fighting with two of his clones over some swag. Their smallest member Gizmo was their leader but as leader he felt it only fitting to tower above them all on mechanical spider legs from his backpack.

Mammoth dimly shuffled round a small bag with a number of valuable computer chips.

"Some real potato chips sound good 'bout now."

"Shut it!" Gizmo fired back in his nasally tone. "Just because they're not all glamorous like other stuff we've nicked doesn't mean people won't pay through the nose to get them! I don't feel safe with you holding that bag with those skull-crushing hands either. Give it to See-More!"

Though Mammoth gave a low toss with no warning, nothing slipped by See-More's enormous eye and he caught it with little trouble.

"Hoo-eee, little runt seems all riled up 'bout these little chips," one of the Billy Numerous' took time out to say. "Must be worth a pretty penny."

Another one poked his head out to say, "Not that robbin' ain't fun but there's a rodeo a couple towns over I'd like to spend some of my share on. Can y'all try to look normal so's we can catch it?"

The third mentioned, "Can only make so many copies of myself for friends before the folks there would start gettin' suspicious."

The villain group made a turn down the street and suddenly they weren't alone anymore. Raven had only just landed and had pulled her hood to cloak her face. She stared at them and they all stared back.

"Titans!" yelled Gizmo to his teammates and they spread out in fighting formation. Each of the young villains kept his eyes peeled in all directions in wait for the rest of them to spring out from the shadows.

Seconds passed and nothing happened.

"What, is it just crow-face today?" A devious little grin spread across Gizmo's face. "Ooo, wouldn't mind putting one of you goody-goodies in the hospital! What do you say guys?"

As the villains cheered and cornered Raven at all ends like a pack of wolves encircling their prey, Raven seemed none too concerned. She had an incoming message from Cyborg, probably pertaining to backup, but ignored it.

It had been too long since she had taken Anger on a walk.

Towering above Raven, Gizmo's little hands itched over which device to use first.

"Come into my parlor," Raven said in a low voice that warped into a soul-chilling growl as her slit eyes turned red and two more opened on her forehead, "said the spider to the _flies_."

Gizmo screamed like a little girl, remembering full well the horrors that lay behind the quiet Titan.

"_Slag it! Retreat! She's the devil! The DEVIL!_" The small boy converted his spider legs into a jetpack as his followers looked on in waning respect…until Raven shot up five feet with writhing tentacles of shadow and plucked Gizmo from the sky. The other boys had only a few seconds to look on in shock of Raven's rarely revealed powers before she sent that tentacle round, knocking them all to the ground.

Kyd Wykkyd had seen enough and as the others were still recuperating he swiped the valuables they had dropped. Raven however had thought what he was thinking before he had thought it and went for him first with a barrage of tentacles so he had to make full use of evasive flight maneuvers. It was all he could do to dodge and evade when they were coming in every direction; he hadn't the second's concentration to be able to teleport.

Raven was so dead set on snagging the elusive phantom that she paid no attention to the others below.

Ever the one for brute force, Mammoth tried pummeling the shadow matter but his huge fist passed straight through every time. See-More fired laser beams at the tentacle that entrapped a screaming Gizmo with the same result but Billy was the one with an idea and he piled up clones behind the lone Titan like a barrel of monkeys.

"Hey there!" Billy said when he was only a couple feet away and coming in fast. "That ain't nice, little la-!"

Raven cut him off with a fist to his face for attempting to call her "little lady", knowing his plan all along. Only the top Billy had been knocked out cold but the sudden impact bowled back the whole stack. Dozens of Billys fell from the sky and poofed out of existence save the one original who moaned in pain on the ground.

The tentacles that surrounded Kyd Wykkyd were like a never-ending maze with no exit and his evasion reached its end when a tentacle snagged his ankle. Now that he was stationary many more consumed him at once and she was free to direct her demonic red glare on the rest of them.

"Anyone _else?_"

Mammoth's physical attacks were useless so he too tried to run but was seized just as soon as he'd turned his back on her. Under that gaze, See-More had trouble standing tall under quaking knees but he still launched an attack, firing his laser beams. Her shadow tentacles may have been impervious to normal attack but her normal body was not.

Raven slid her whole extended body to a side to avoid the beam.

Though it may have been an advantage that the beam passed straight through her tentacles when it concerned freeing Gizmo it also meant she couldn't shield herself with a tentacle. Angry Raven may have been a mighty force to reckon with but if she were to attempt another overzealous attack like the one on the now captive Kyd Wykkyd she'd suck her energy reserves dry.

Somehow she didn't envision the Hive Five granting her mercy if she were to collapse to the ground from overexertion.

Raven sunk back down to ground level so her speed wouldn't be compromised from the tentacles weighing her down. The tentacles fanned out throughout the whole length of the street and poured over buildings and they writhed like an octopus with rabies. She glided along the dark energy on an even playing field with See-More beating him around with those tentacles but not unleashing a vital blow when Angry Raven demanded domination and normal Raven was all too happy to indulge.

See-More could do many things with his signature weapon but focused only on the laser beams when a form as powerful as the one Raven projected would not be vulnerable to his hypnosis. He fired and fired and Raven put up her shields to evade them. She had every intention of making this last, quenching Anger's thirst, but for her overconfidence she was struck in the shoulder by a beam.

She flinched back, her first hit for the battle, and a couple of them cheered.

That first hit was also her last. As she could've done all along, Raven swept the tentacles around See-More like a flower blooming in reverse and did the same to Billy Numerous just to be safe.

As the boys writhed, struggled and swore, Raven called the cops via her communicator.

She turned back to the villains and even with her eyes returning to their normal violet single set, with the tentacles fading back into nothingness, they all huddled together shaking at the awesome dark power displayed, totally petrified. She could've put them all in a month long coma had she wanted and for all they knew she still could.

"_Now_," she grinned as they all flinched, "I have some things to take care of so I'd like for you all to stay _right here_ until the cops come. Return what you've stolen and go peacefully." None of them had the mind to protest and she continued, "Anger was under a choke chain this time but I may just have to-" –she moved her hand as if letting go and a few of them yelped– "_release_ her if I have to track any of you down. Understand?"

"_Y-yes ma'am!_" four of them cried out in terror. Kyd Wykkyd nodded his head vigorously.

Raven flew from the scene, never doubting that any of the scared-stiff boys was going to move from that spot. Anger was satisfied but her more peaceful side still was not and she flew on.

There had to be somewhere in the city's borders where she could be free to mediate. She just had to find it.


	13. Chapter 13

In accordance with 13, this IS an unlucky chapter. Would always love some feedback on how I'm doing.

Arual-san

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In that he was confined to a desk for seven hours out of the day listening to boring old professors drone on and on, the only safe way that Gar could protest and get his pent up energy out was by tapping between either of his feet. Pain was a good motivator for good behavior indeed but although his wrists got whipped less every day he hadn't managed to go through a whole day without at least one whipping.

Gar mindlessly turned the page of his textbook in sync with the other boys.

Not allowed even weekends off, he felt very much like Popo and Chico under the harsh rule of the Penguin. Thinking that made Gar wonder how the giant birds were doing, if their new prison at the Gotham Zoo was any better than his at the academy.

"Probably," he murmured lowly, safe when the professor was at the other end of the room.

The day had a way of passing like every one had before. There were exams to study up for and Gar had to make sure to always stay in tight-knit groups with his new gang. Even as weak as an individual one of them was, together they were strong and they bunched together at once in the hallways to fend off against bullies. If there would be a leader among them Gar supposed it would be Wesley, the boy who had an impossibly narrow nose that he had to keep pushing his glasses back on. He organized things and started most discussions but didn't hold really a higher head than the other boys.

"You can sure take a beating, Gar," Wesley whistled as he sat down at the established geek table. "It's healing up pretty fast," he commented, looking over his friend's battered face. "I brought some of my sister's makeup to keep the battered look going longer if you want."

"Yeah," said one of the others, a freckled boy named Terrence, "those guys may be jerks but they will leave you alone long enough to start the beatings fresh next time."

Not only were his new friends offering support to something they put up with on a daily basis, they were also looking after their new member by offering to take his place as punching bag to the popular boys. Gar smiled. "Thanks guys, I'm good."

"Yeah but…we really should have used the buddy system or something," said Laurence guiltily, looking down at his own twitting fingers. "We all know that the professors aren't going to do anything unless they catch it in the act."

"Buddy system?" Terrence repeated with some dry wit. "How about a buddy flock?"

A few of them snickered at their own expense, thinking how ridiculous they all would look moving all through the academy all day every day like a flock of geese. It may have protected the first to get dropped off for the night but the last would get pummeled all the harder for trying to escape punishment for being geeks. They really could be caught any time any place all alone.

"So anyway," Wesley said suddenly, possibly sensing his friends' declining moods, wanting to lift them, "we're all set for Wizards and Warlords tonight. Oliver is playing Head Wizard and the rest of you have your usual positions. Gar, you're going to have to start out as a knave but with any luck you should progress to a more desirable position in subsequent games."

The subject of the game that night was bound to come up eventually and with it came a sinking feeling in Gar's gut. He tried to imagine that sinking feeling was some horrible parasite eating him from the inside out, tried to make it look believable.

"Ah!" Gar cried out, clutching the right side of his midsection. "My spleen – it hurts!"

The other boys took time out at once from their discussion to direct all attention to their friend, some giving him more space, some giving him less, one taking a whiff of Gar's mushy spinach to detect food poisoning. They were all concerned and completely taken with his act and Gar thought he was playing the role well until his communicator vibrated from his pocket.

He flipped it open under the table and saw the message from Dick: Wrong side.

Hoping they were too worried to notice, Gar quickly moved his hands over to his left side and resumed feigning horrible pain. He allowed Wesley and Laurence to help lead him away to the infirmary and for a couple seconds he and Dick exchanged glances from across the lunchroom.

"Burning! Burning!" Gar moaned, clutching his gut like it was killing him when he was sat down on a cot in the infirmary. Burning was never a good sign and feigning that it was so bad prevented him from having to go into any further detail.

"Take these," said the wiry young doctor, handing him a couple pills.

As soon as the school doctor turned around and Gar's friends were looking after to see what he would do next, Gar chucked the pills out the window.

"Easy as pie," Gar said as he relaxed on his top bunk, arms behind his head. Feigning an illness rather than a real beating got him some special treatment with some packets of chamomile tea and an extra blanket for the night.

Though spleen had been a fun word to shout, Gar had eventually gone with the traditional stomach virus. Stomach viruses hit hard but the body killed them off fast so although Gar had gotten to lounge in the dorm the rest of the day the doctor expected him back in classes at half day tomorrow. Faking out his new friends had brought Gar some guilt but that guilt was wiped from his mind when he'd gotten to the freely surf the web and goof off for hours until Dick had gotten back.

"Ready for tonight?" Dick questioned and in that he was certain of what Gar's past hours had been doing he had to make sure. He would cram every bit of information into that thick skull if he needed. "What are their room numbers?"

"34 and 20," Gar answered promptly, smartly when he thought Dick doubted him. "I've rubbed my skin pink to ready my new uniform. Their last names are Reeves, Bennett and Robertson to look up in the files. I have a two hour window to go between the three places and it's all set on my stopwatch." He gave a mocking smile. "Anything else?"

Dick grinned back, equally mocking. "Actually yes, smart aleck. Bradley's roommate is in the gothic sort of group. I don't know that he would be the sort loyal to Bradley if he were to catch you in their room but be on guard."

"Heh, a jock and a goth as _friends?_" He blew a raspberry. "Yeah right, the guy would probably help me out faster."

"Don't chance it. The goth meeting tonight gets out a half hour earlier than ours so go to Bradley's room first." Dick proceeded to bore Gar out of his skull going over every little detail of things he already knew. That was Robin though and after long practice Gar only needed to watch the way his lips moved to know the right time to nod to show that he was listening.

Finally…

"I think that's everything. Think you got it-?"

"All," Gar finished for him with far too much enthusiasm. "Yes, yes, I've got it all!" Now that Dick had finally stopped he sprung up off the bed like the mattress contained a rocket booster. "Let's get it over with and crack this case already!"

Dick grabbed his collar before he reached the door. "It doesn't start for another hour."

"What?" he squawked in disbelief. "No way! That boring lecture of yours must've lasted four!"

"It was only a half hour."

Huffing, Gar looked at the clock as if convinced his friend was lying but the hands sided with Dick. His enthusiasm didn't wane in all that time he had to wait though and he kept it up by playing an addictive computer game.

"Time to go, Gar," Dick announced, checking his watch.

"Yeah, yeah," Gar said absent-mindedly, hardly daring to blink when one mistake was the difference between life and death. "Just let me waste this last horde of aliens and-"

"I believe I said there was a deadline for me," And recalling the time when he had been just as enveloped over the computer screen, Dick yanked away the chair from the desk. Gar gasped in dread when his little spaceship exploded spectacularly and all the little aliens lined up in a row laughing and pointing that the Earth was now theirs.

It might've seemed to any outside eyes that only Dick had left the dorm that night but as he locked the door behind him a tiny green fly touched down on his shoulder for a free ride to the first room. As Dick passed Room 34 and he felt the fly leave his shoulder he whispered from the side of mouth not to break anything, surely speaking loudly enough to Beast Boy's tiny form.

Out of habit Dick looked after the youngest Titan and saw Gar flying more than a little lopsidedly, unconvincingly for a normal fly. It was probably for him having to adjust to the insect's very different compound eyes but he found his way under the locked door and into the room.

The only footsteps Gar heard were Dick's walking away and he transformed back to human once he'd bypassed the door.

Looking around it seemed like a normal room and one split right down the middle at that with its two resident's very different likes. That made it very easy to discern that the side bearing sports memorabilia and babes in bikinis belonged to Bradley.

Before he could turn left though, he caught sight of a full length mirror.

"Stupid uniform," Gar grumbled, pulling away from the mirror.

In the same fashion as the whole mission had been thus far, Gar wasn't sure what exactly he was looking for as he dug through the jock's dresser but he made a note of how it was placed so he could replace it the same way. One could never know an obsessive-compulsive by glance alone.

Time passed and he'd laid on the lower bunk everything that had come out clean: several stacks of the different pieces of the school uniform. As he sifted through the more personal items Gar couldn't help but feel that this was the library incident all over again.

He went through some autographed baseball cards, a Knights cap and a strange obsession of Bradley's with poseable action figures.

"Wish I had my own action figure," Gar mumbled, fiddling with the arm of a toy Flash.

At least six years too old for such an interest, such knowledge that Bradley still collected action figures would be great to use against the bully in a crowded lunchroom but it wasn't what Dick had sent him there for. He continued searching even in the little hideaways Dick had been sure to mention after Gar's uniform had been confiscated.

Gar discovered no lists of hidden agendas, no big wad of suspiciously acquired cash, nothing valuable stolen from the grounds...but valuables could have been shipped immediately. It seemed like an everyday room like any other and that result was what Gar had been dreading from the start.

As he packed away all that he had moved, he found his attention drawn to the only light in the room that was the screensaver on Bradley's computer and plugged into its hard drive was an unusual adapter cord.

Out of curiosity, Gar picked it up and examined it. It wasn't for any MP3 player or the like, not with the plug having the wide circumference of a quarter and delicate wirings inside. It had to be a hook-up for something large but what Gar hadn't the slightest idea when the laptops were about the only piece of technology allowed in the dormitories.

There was certainly no boom box to hook it up to anyway.

He set it down, drew a picture of its specifics on the notepad he had brought for Dick to look through later. Looking through the desk's drawers produced a number of codes and passwords too difficult to commit to memory.

A certain series of numbers caught his attention for it was one Dick had told him to be on the look out for.

"Swiss bank account," Gar said aloud and he smirked. That information was supposed to be withheld until heirs were of age, that Bradley had one meant that he wasn't playing by the rules.

His search of the desk done, Gar clicked the mouse to get into the files but found himself barred with a password prompt. He scowled at Bradley's unnecessary paranoia and clicked the hint button.

In the '96 attack on the Bay Harbor Bridge what did Aquaman use to save the day?

"_What!?_" Gar came back, plenty self assured until he read the particular hero listed. "You like Aquaman!? Aquaman _sucks! _I'm a kid and my powers are cooler than his! How am I supposed to know anything about _him!?_"

The question glared at him from the screen and Gar glared back, feeling insulted that his fanboying had come down to this. He typed in the word 'fish' and was denied access.

"Yeah, just a little obvious," he muttered and he went through a multitude of other sea creatures.

When guess ten failed to grant him access he gave it up as a lost cause and finished cleaning up the room. Already fifty of his minutes were up and that was fifty less he'd have to spend in the other rooms.

Gar headed over to Room 20 where he was to search the whole thing instead of half and he picked up the pace when he'd taken too long in the first one. He didn't know which side belonged to Regis and Chad but he searched all the same.

He came up with the same results: a few passwords and account numbers and that strange adapter cord.

"What the heck is this for?" he wondered, looking the cord over. The three jocks were all basically the same mean-spirited bully as far as Gar could tell so it additionally confused him in that only two of them possessed those cords. Money wasn't an issue with these people and the cord was plugged into both computers, signifying use, so Gar was stumped.

Hoping Dick would have better luck, he scanned over the map to memorize the turns to the records office. He didn't have much time to go so took the chance of morphing into a fast insect – a dragonfly – and flying high as to not be spotted.

There were a handful of boys in the halls making their way back from earlier meetings but most stretched on later into the night when the academy granted its students the small decency on weekends of a late start to sleep in and fewer classes.

Gar hoped that no one was looking up when he switched into a smaller insect to slip under the last door that required an access code. Fifty long filing cabinets were the only thing in that rectangular room: if he was going to find any dirt on the jock boys here would be the place to find it.

"Reeves, Bennett and Robertson," the boy recited aloud again.

There was no light from the moon like in the other rooms so Gar pulled out his flashlight. He went to the R's first to first get the lackeys out of the way. That letter had a large amount of students listed and he had to go through six drawers before he found 'Re' for Chad. The record on him was complete down to every last detail: birth date, social security number, number of siblings and every letter grade he had received since his first day of first grade.

"May 8th, 2008," Gar read aloud, "received disciplinary action for breaking the nose of freshman Jensen Thomas: one week detention. Place: East Wing, Reported by: Professor Baxter." He flipped through the next pages but the charges were the same: bullying and lacking grades. It read the same on Bradley's file. Their leader must've been a crafty guy to skate them all through the majority of his wrong-doings.

"No one's better than _my_ leader," huffed Gar as if insulting Chad and Bradley to their faces as he put their files away.

He felt he had to prove that by finding a huge glaring mark against Regis on his file, just one thing that would make his scheme come tumbling down. Even if it wasn't there today it would be soon after Robin got finished with him in that meeting taking place at that very moment.

Gar thumbed through the files until he found Regis' and he looked it over intensely, more thoroughly than the other two, determined to find a tiny clue hidden in the delinquencies all so that he wouldn't have to go back empty-handed…again.

Could Regis have beaten up one of these boys for knowing too much? If the school were to do further interrogations into the subject and victim…the bullies of course would say nothing but the victims…

Gar shelved Regis' suspicion-free file back into its compartment and hurried down the section to the A's for one victim Phillip Anderson.

He came smashing into something very solid and fell back to the floor. Gar recovered instantaneously but the old security guard right beside him was still recovering. The boy's heart leapt into his throat and his breath came in ragged gasps, the thought that he had to have tripped a silent alarm not listed in the school's security system racing through his mind.

The guard was sure to have realized that he had bumped into something solid and that solid something was right there on the ground before him so Gar couldn't just disappear with an insect form. He had to change…but into what? What when he only had three seconds?

A kangaroo? That was the size of a person but it wasn't green.

A cheetah? Also not green and he'd probably get shot to boot.

He was on his last chance as the guard recovered fully and moved his flashlight to see what he had hit. The light came upon a boy, clenching his teeth tight in that he had been caught. Gar had been unable to think of any one animal in that second that could save him.

Dread pooled in the boy's stomach as he was pulled out of the records office into the halls that were now full with students getting out from their meetings. Gar snapped his eyes shut tight but still he felt all other talk quiet, felt every eye in that hall burning into him.

"Nice burglar outfit, kid," the old guard scoffed, ripping the mask from his face so there was no doubt over who he was in that moth-eaten set of too-tight clothes. His skin was raw and pink from the bristle brushing but was nothing next to the furious blush over his cheeks.

In came the laughter from all ends of the hall, the insults all booming in his ears like the whole of a percussion section beating at their drums all at once. The guard didn't feel the need to bring him all the way to the office and released his hold. He had all the information needed to make a report and the punishment Gar would get from his peers would be worse than anything he could inflict.

Gar managed to open his eyes and the boys were closing in around him from all sides, drowning him in a sea of cruel laughter, pushing him around with jeers that he had the lamest cat burglar costume ever, but there were a sparse few that were not laughing. He saw his Wizards and Warlords group looking hurt in that they had been lied to, that hurt preventing them from going to his aid like they had offered before.

He saw Dick apart from the popular kids against a wall, very clearly clenching his teeth behind his lips even from the distance, digging his nails into his hands so that the knuckles turned white.

His friend didn't move from that spot and Gar knew he was alone.


	14. Chapter 14

The horrible laughter pounded in Dick's ears so loud that it was the only thing he could hear. It would've been the only thing he could think of too, that sickening regret for having to watch his friend suffer while he could only watch, but a leader had no leisure time to just stay there up against the wall. Already the cogs in his mind were whirring.

He pushed up from the wall and headed straight to the circle where Gar was being bullied.

Throughout the mortal embarrassment Gar was feeling some spark of hope shone in his face when he saw his friend's face coming nearer throughout all the mean and mocking faces all around. It wasn't to last when Dick pushed Gar like all the others. For a moment Gar was confused but then Dick brushed by him in the space of a couple seconds and whispered into his ear: "Cameras".

He'd joined in with the bullies to get in close contact, to tell Gar to break free somehow and destroy any video evidence of him transforming that could be presented to the dean. If alarms had been installed so too could have surveillance cameras.

Even though such a subject was of vital importance that spark of Gar's for his friend fizzled out to be replaced with a look of real budding anger rarely seen on the boy's normally carefree face. His face didn't seem meant to darken that way.

Once he'd informed Gar of what he needed to inform him of Dick was onto a brisk walk away from the other boys. He knew all the correct shortcuts to make and his youth gave speed to his walk so that he was soon enough head and head with the guard that had caught Gar. Dick was going to make sure there would be two sides to this. In the few minutes he'd had to prepare he was already working out the finest details.

As he walked Dick's eyes slid to the guard in an unspoken challenge. He sped up.

The guard growled in return and sped up too, having a little trouble with his age and a few extra pounds. He was first to open the door but Dick slipped through the crack before the guard could muscle him out of the way. Even pulling out ahead gave him an advantage in that his was the first face the headmaster viewed and his calm, rational voice heard over the louder, more frustrated one of the guard.

"It appears that a special condition of my cousin's has not been seen to and I'm here to remedy that."

"Special condition, my eye!" the guard boomed back, Dick's practiced tone of patience, the matter of fact way he said it riling the guard as per his plan. "That boy was caught after hours in the Permanent Records office! Have an explanation for that, do you Grayson?"

"Yes I do," Dick replied calmly, nothing in his voice betraying a small bit of uncertainty. To weave a lie in the presence of the highest authority in a prestigious academy, to do it when such a man possessed a lifetime of sniffing out such lies, presentation was key. "Gar is a somnambulist." He slid a mocking glance to the guard. "Somnambulist _meaning_-"

"I know what a sleepwalker is you little smart mouth!" the guard spat back and by how quick and intense his objection rose Dick wouldn't doubt that the man would've liked to smack him across the face for his lip. "That kid was _not_ sleepwalking!"

Folding his arms Dick slyly replied, "I wasn't aware that you were privy to all the private information of Gar's medical records. Do you have a second job as his physician?"

"Hold your tongue, Burkey," the headmaster ordered his guard in the same calm and collected voice as Dick. The finely groomed man in his forties had simply sat there at his oversized desk as the two had come into his office arguing from the get go but he seemed too refined to allow a shouting match to take place in his presence. "We can be gentlemen about this, can't we? Have a seat and let's hear this out."

While the two took seats with the grave air that they were on opposing sides in a courtroom the headmaster hardly acted the role of an imposing judge and he poured them each a cup of his evening pot of Earl Grey, took the time to ask if they wanted honey or sugar with their tea. The two gave quick responses, not caring either way for tea they were too wired to touch.

Not allowing their moods to affect him, the headmaster took a deep sip of his tea. Only after he'd made them wait did he point at Guard Burkey to begin his take of the story. Burkey's viewpoint was with great hostility against the student, personal like it had been his house broken into instead of the records office that the boy had dared such an act while under the man's shift. Again as the man complained on and on, Dick was concerned that the security system he'd hacked into had had no mention of the upgraded silent alarms when a coded lock should've been enough already. It could've been to combat hackers such as him or the system could've simply not been updated.

Either way, if video evidence existed, if it had already been viewed or if Gar didn't get to it in time much more than their mission would be in jeopardy. Anyone could do their research and find out that the shapeshifter was Beast Boy. With him unveiled his accomplice that had come with him to the academy would be as well and with Dick unveiled as Robin Batman's true identity would follow a second after.

What a way that would be to prove to Batman his competency as leader of a team.

Had his conscience allowed him Dick would have been the one to jam the video feed himself just to make absolute certain that his secret identity remained secret but he couldn't allow his friend to take the fall for his mistake. Everything relied on Gar getting to that feed.

Sitting in that chair he found himself surprised that he trusted his friend that much in such dire circumstances…pondering it further he realized he shouldn't have been surprised at all.

With all those thoughts swirling wildly in his head Dick almost didn't hear the guard's rant come to an end.

"Those are some heavy charges," the headmaster said plainly, reciting what the two already knew.

The headmaster's attention turned onto Dick and he knew it was his turn to take the truth that Burkey had told and warp it to fit his needs. The head of the school seating calmly before him was purposely fronting an easy going manner to fake students into a false sense of security, ready to pounce on the slightest inaccuracy in a student's story, tear apart the lie to its core until only the truth remained.

That was how the system worked and many boys before him had fallen prey to it.

Dick only smiled.

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When he was released from the headmaster's office Dick was the only one in the dark hallways and for once he didn't have to tread lightly as to not be caught, having permission from the office to his room and nothing else. The gang of boys had long since broken up. They were all in bed and bed sounded good to Dick after the day he had had.

He turned the knob of his dorm room and pushed.

It was locked. Thinking it odd but not thinking on it further, Dick pulled out the key from his pocket. It unlocked the door but when he pushed it refused again to open to him.

"Gar?" he called out quietly, tapping the door. "Hey, are you awake? You locked the door and I think it's stuck on something. Can you let me in?"

"I _could_," shot an irritated voice from within the room, "but I think we'd both be happier if you found somewhere else to sleep tonight. I'm sure your _friends_ would have you."

"My-? They are _not_ my friends," Dick answered stiffly, appalled at the thought. "Look, I got you out of trouble by saying you're a sleepwalker and that you were wearing that outfit because you're a superhero fanboy and you were role-playing while you were sick. No detentions, no nothing, all you have to do is wear a bell around your wrist at night and you're set. Let me in."

"Hmmph. Let yourself in." And Gar wasn't bluffing – his voice was no closer to the door to unlock it. "I'd really like to see the great Boy Wonder lock-pick his way through a chair. You _can_ do _anything_ can't you?"

"Oh come on, you can't seriously…" But anything and everything else that Dick said, when he tried to sympathize with, reason with and finally demand entry Gar ignored in favor of a Titan that he wasn't angry with, one that was always nice to talk with.

"He is sounding quite upset," Starfire commented as a side thought but Beast Boy was more upset and so her attention was for him. His cheeks still burned blazing red and there would have been a few tears there if not for him being much too angry to cry.

"Do not worry, Beast Boy. It will be hard now but the feelings of embarrassment will pass. Perhaps next time you act the role of the cat burglar you might wear cat ears? Like on the Pop Band game?"

"Right, Star," Gar sighed, grateful that she was trying either way.

"And Robin is a good and just leader to us all so surely…there must have been some manner of misunderstanding between you two?"

"Oh no, no misunderstanding," Gar spat out with great bitterness when "Robin" had took over the boy's personality even without the mask, "he just stood there and watched the whole school gang up on me."

Hearing that, Starfire wasn't quite so eager to defend Robin and she deliberated a while before she spoke next. "I am sure that it is difficult to balance the scales of what is right and what is not when one is leader."

When Starfire said what she said she wasn't taking one side or another though her pretty orange face creased slightly in hurt passed over from Beast Boy. They all knew how overboard their leader could go. When or _if_ Robin was allowed entry he would have two miffed Titans to answer to.

It wasn't long until that very thing happened, though not by any choice of Gar's.

Just the same as Batgirl had done, Dick climbed in through the window via a grappling hook, miniature-sized and probably strapped to his ankle along with an array of other gadgets. The Bats were always the Boy Scouts of the superhero world; Gar supposed he shouldn't have been surprised after he'd locked the main door with such fiery purpose that he'd forgotten to lock the window.

"Star wants to talk to you," And without any further warning Gar hurled the communicator at Dick's head.

Not even needing to look, the boy snatched the communicator out of the air like Gar knew he would every time. All that he would allow Starfire to see was his ungloved hand over the screen, only when he was ready would he allow her to see his face.

"Robin? Robin, are you there? I do not like being tossed around like a footed ball even in this form."

Dick put on his mask and messed up his hair and doing it again for another night after Bumblebee was getting slightly annoying. Things would have been so much less complicated had he been alone.

He pulled back the chair blocking the door to sit down and he braced himself for the inevitable. "Starfire?"

Her hand glowed green. Though she couldn't have any hope of disciplining him from that distance the message was clear. "You will apologize to Beast Boy and you will do so this instant."

"Star-"

"I don't need any _forced_ apologies." He'd been laying on his back before on the top bunk but Gar now rolled away onto his side with some force.

"You will fix this thing that you have broken," Starfire ordered further, not too modest to not know when to order her leader to do something when it was needed. "Boys do not do the hugging and the crying like girls but still you must not-"

"Star, please," he had to cut off before she took it too far. "I know."

"You cannot just act like nothing has happened when you have hurt a friend."

Every word she said was true and yet every word he didn't need reminding of in that voice that he missed so, the one he'd been hoping to hear again in cheer after a long mission's end, not disappointment. Dick knew that being a girl, even an alien girl, she would just keep carrying on, dragging the guilt trip on him as hard and heavy as it would go. He was setting no good example but had no choice but to tick off another Titan that night.

"It's late and you know that we have to get up early."

"Yes, but I am not finishing talking with you."

"I'm sorry, Starfire, I really am but I…I'm finished talking with you." And as soon as he'd said that Starfire started off at once in rapid fire everything else she'd been meaning to say, trying to fit it all in, and Dick just kept apologizing, not wanting to hear it. When he could take it no more he just snapped the communicator shut before he'd lost the nerve.

Oh how he would pay for that later. Just because Starfire didn't have a creepy extra set like Raven's angry form did didn't make her glowing green eyes any less frightening when she was angry. There was no contest that she was physically stronger than him and he might very well get beaten up by a girl when he got back to the tower.

Dick stared at the communicator for a moment before setting it on the nightstand. He looked back to the top bunk.

"BB?"

There was no response and he had the feeling his friend was not yet asleep. There was nothing to be done when Gar was faking sleep and unwilling to talk. Despite the old rule that one should never go to bed angry, Dick tucked in, hoping it would give Gar a chance to calm down.

Though he soon enough heard Gar's snoring from overhead sound like a walrus with asthma Dick didn't get to escape from the night's lose-lose events quite so quickly. Tossing and turning on the lumpy mattress didn't help and Beast Boy and Starfire's disappointed faces were there every time he closed his eyes. They didn't understand the tough decisions a leader had to make. He couldn't imagine either of them lasting a week in the position he was in on their team all day, every day. Trying to justify his actions that way didn't help.

He figured he must have dozed off into a fitful sleep somewhere along the line when he felt himself suddenly waking up.

There were people in the room, three of them.

Hearing their voices made Dick want to groan, made him wish that he was still asleep and this was just some awful dream. Not another blow, not one more, Gar had had enough from this devious academy but Regis, Chad and Bradley didn't seem to think so. The very least Dick could do when he felt that he'd taken a roundhouse kick to the stomach was pretend to be fiercely asleep, comatose even, when one tried to wake him.

Whatever they had in mind Dick would not be a forced participant.

He had hoped that the boys' idea of punishment would be mild, marking up Gar's face with permanent black marker or the like, but silently resigned himself to the fact that it would not be, not when they could kick him again when he was as low as he was going to get. Dick knew Gar wasn't going to get off lightly but even he was a little startled when his friend was lifted off the top bunk and carted through the door.

Just as soon as they left Dick came up from his mattress bolt right, gritting his teeth.

That they dared to take a prank so far against one of his closest friends boiled his blood and for a few seconds he wanted to throw the mission and everything that lay tied to it out the window so he could beat the snot out of their soft, spoiled faces just _once_. They were all so eager and willing to divvy out undeserved punishment but he was sure they would turn into quivering cowards the second the tables were turned.

As furious as he was, Dick's disciplined training kicked in and his rational side won out like it usually did. He forced himself to wait until there was enough safe stalking distance to follow and he stormed the halls after them.


	15. Chapter 15

Howdy everyone! I know waiting this long for the next update sucks but I was actually working on two chapters instead of one. Lucky you! It's a two-parter I didn't feel right not posting at the same time.

To clear up any confusion, I prefer the original Batman the Animated Series so it's what I'll be basing the Batman characters off of even if the animation styles between that series and Teen Titans are very different. What can I say? It was the series my brother and I grew up with and the one I love just as much even today. : ) I'm currently watching the anime-influenced "The Batman" and I like a few things in it better than the original so don't be surprised if I do a little meshing here and there if any Batman characters show up.

Arual-san

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The sun beat down on the coast of Jump City and it was the perfect temperature of pleasantly warm without being hot and sticky. It seemed to be such a great day that the villains had taken the day off too; so great was the Titan's conviction of this that their communicators lay abandoned yards away on the roof of the tower. Even superheroes needed a break sometimes.

Robin and Cyborg played a fierce round of one-man volleyball that would've exhausted a normal person. Starfire had simply laid out a towel to catch some rays but Beast Boy had spent several minutes setting up his own personal tanning station, complete with anything he could ever need so he wouldn't have to sacrifice one minute away from the gorgeous temperature.

With oversized shades and sunscreen, he laid back to let the sun do its work.

"So…what exactly do you hope to accomplish, Kermit?" a drawling voice asked of him in doubt. "To turn a healthy shade of pond algae?"

The boy cracked an eye open but his good mood did not diminish. "The others are getting into the beachy mood; you should too, Rae, it's good for you. You already wear a swimsuit every day."

"I do _not_ wear a swimsuit. It's a leotard."

"Sure, sure, lose the sleeves and it _wouldn't_ be a one piece." It was uncanny how he always seemed to know the right thing to say to win their arguments at present but Beast Boy didn't question it. He could do no wrong. In one swift motion, he yanked away her cape and threw it over the edge of the tower. She could've easily flown down to retrieve it but Beast Boy's message was received.

"Relax and get a tan, Raven. I'm sure we've got some SPF250 around here somewhere."

For once Raven didn't respond with something snarky. For all that her sarcastic attitude was still intact, summer fever seemed contagious even to gothic girls and she departed to search out that level of sunscreen.

He lay back again to relax but that relaxation was doused again in that same second.

"What on Earth? What's with the ball?"

Beast Boy pulled his shades but, if he expected anything, it wasn't to see the volleyball hovering in mid-air several yards out of bounds. On this day where nothing could go wrong, Beast Boy changed into a bird large enough to bring it back.

But then something went very wrong.

He reached the ball and he couldn't seem to separate himself from it. The ends of his wings were stuck on something he couldn't see.

He cawed out in his bird call but the rest of his teammates suddenly seemed tied up with their own problems. Beast Boy strained and struggled to turn around and felt himself get tangled up even more. Finally, when he could turn around, did the light catch the stressor in just the right way.

Sticky threads of webbing stretched from all sides of the tower as far as he could see and the webbing even blanketed the sky. He was sure that that went against reasonable logic but still there was no way out as the Titans fanned out to fight spiders the size of golf carts.

His arms lay pinned and useless against his chest and he could only kick his feet a little before they too were trapped. His bird call wasn't strong enough. Beast Boy changed back to human and cried out for help.

The others were swarmed by spiders at all sides. They couldn't hear him, they couldn't help him; they were so thick in the midst of battle that not one of them seemed to remember he was there. But he wasn't forgotten by the spiders and one crawled up to meet him. Its mandibles dripped with deadly venom and its front legs danced with cruel delight as it wrapped him up even more in the webbing. It wrapped him up like a mummy, so tight that he couldn't move, that he couldn't breathe.

The strands moved to cover his eyes but before Beast Boy was completely blinded he saw the spider's dripping mandibles come down for the kill.

He found himself able to scream when he thought the webbing had been covering his mouth. But as soon as he screamed the scene blinked out of existence and he saw the outside grounds of the academy.

His small chest heaved deeply. It had all been a dream…but he still couldn't move his arms.

"W-what?" Gar exhaled hoarsely, still catching his breath. He moved his head round to take stock and he found himself in a duct-tape cocoon on the backside of the horse that was a part of the founding father's tribute statue. Just like a piece of hunted game.

The sun was all an illusion too. It was night and the academy grounds were damp with rain puddles.

"You've got to be _kidding_ me!" Gar yelled out into the night with such force that his voice cracked. He pulled and strained and, when there was no one around to see, he changed into any form of animal that could slip out from the tape. Small animals became trapped in the cocoon, large ones the tape drove welts into their skin and anything with fur was worse than removing any bandage.

All he managed to do was tangle himself up into an extremely awkward position and paralyze himself from the waist up.

"Son of a-!"

"Watch your language!" Dick fired back at the little changeling before he could finish. Though it was impossible for Gar to crane his head back in the opposite direction, he could just imagine his leader materializing out of the shadow the building cast.

"Hurry up and get me out of here!" said Gar in panic once he'd added everything up. "It's those popular guys! _They_ did this! They're going to teleport the statue to that alien smuggling ring with _me_ on it! They'd think that would be so funny and-!"

"Stop!" Dick ordered, cutting off Gar's nervous rambling. He circled around so that Gar could now see he carried a switchblade to cut the duct tape. "None of that's going to happen. Just hold still."

"It'll happen if you don't hurry!"

"No, it won't! Aside from its nostalgic value this statue has no value at all; it would be worthless melted down! And while we're on that note-" – Dick took the time to weave a special tone of bitterness in his voice – "those three are completely clean!"

"_What!?_"

"Their _big_ secret was a _gambling_ ring!" he hissed in heated frustration that tipped the dial to 11 in that he'd had to wait to vent. "It was an interconnected _gambling_ ring with the other top boy's academies! They may've hacked into accounts but it's _their_ money so who really cares how they waste it!? Chad and Bradley have been acting a little weird lately but that's no crime at all!"

Gar took the news like a slap in the face. "You mean all this spying, all this investigation-?"

"It's been for _nothing_, absolutely nothing, _YES!_" he shouted, furious that he had to voice his failure aloud when his teammate prodded. "All this time we were tailing the wrong people!"

"Well, in that case…" Where Dick had been cutting through the tape that bound Gar to the statue, Gar kicked him away. "I don't want or _need_ your help. You can just get lost, _Richie!_"

"I'm trying to help you!" The kick he had received had not hurt in the slightest but the intention in it did. "If anyone sees you like this in the morning-!"

"You could've helped me before in that hallway but no, _nothing_ is more important than the mission! Nothing at all! If you had no reason to keep tailing your group why didn't you help me!?"

"Helping you would've meant breaking character in front of the whole school. I just needed to-"

"Oh, skip it! I don't want to hear it!" yelled Beast Boy back. "Why don't you just take this big, rehearsed lecture of yours to the chop shop and tell it like it really is? We're _not_ your teammates and we're _not_ your friends, we're just lackeys for you to order around!"

Dick's grip slipped on the tape and a shallow cut opened on his palm. "That's not true!"

"It's _not_, is it? Tell me that you _wouldn't_ have sent me on that investigation tonight without that stand-in uniform if I hadn't protested. Tell me you _wouldn't_ have ordered me to go home in a second if you hadn't been able to fool the headmaster. _Well?_"  
A couple moments of Dick's hesitation was all the answer Gar needed.

"You never _wanted_ me here anyway."

He'd managed to slip up before but now Dick stopped cutting at the tape completely when the meaning of all that Gar had said started to seep in. Hearing those words and how they shaped him as a person would hurt anyone with a conscience but Gar's hurt ran deeper still. He fiercely looked away and tried to keep it all hidden, every bit, under a mask of resentment.

"I…" Gar started and despite the toughness he fronted there was a slight tremble in his voice, "I didn't come here to meet Batman or to try to pretend that I'm a normal human again. I didn't even do it for that bounty on a picture of your face…"

Dick listened on. He was sure he knew where this was going and he was sorry that he hadn't realized it at all until now.

"You and Cyborg are best friends and there's nothing you won't tell Starfire. Raven's even used her physic abilities to get into your head. But you and me," Gar gulped in that he was the only one left out of the loop, "I don't feel like we connect…hardly at all. You'd never hang out with me when one of the others was available. It…really feels like you're a stranger to me sometimes and I just wanted to…"

"I…" Dick heard himself say, surprised he could answer, "I'm…"

"Sorry?" Gar questioned when the other boy was slow to reply. He grunted in doubt. "Sure you are. You just needed dense little Beast Boy to get you to come to your senses."

"You…" Dick tried, not sure what to say, "you know my identity now. None of the others do."

Gar nodded. "I know that Richard Grayson is the same stuck-up jerk that Robin is." Moments passed where neither of them said a thing and Gar continued, "I can get out of this tape myself. Just go back to sleep and I'll be gone in the morning."

He'd been given permission to walk away but Dick just stared…and not for long. He grabbed up a piece of tangled tape and cut through it with force, did the same with another strip and continued on.

"I said I didn't want your help!"

"Well I'm giving it anyway so you can just hold still. I'm not letting those jerks gang up on you again for this!"

"Because you don't want me ratting you out to Starfire again?"

"Because you don't deserve it!" Dick came back. "Do you really think I would have ever preferred scum like those three over you? Do you have any idea just _how_ many times I wanted to slug them all in the face?"

But by now Gar was tired of talking, sick of the back and forth conversation that would never go anywhere. When they returned to the tower things would return to normal again and he would just be the spare teammate, the forgotten friend.

In his determination to free his friend, Dick was exceedingly careful with the blade not to cut Gar when the tape was so twisted and tight. He adjusted Gar frequently to get the best angles on which to cut the tape. He gave a warning whenever he was about to pry it off from bare skin but Gar didn't cry out when it happened, equally determined not to show any further weakness when he was already in such a humiliating position.

It was a slow and delicate progress, complicated much worse with how badly Gar had twisted himself up. Gar had been the one to talk before but now he was silent. That cold silence built until it was too much and Dick was forced to break it.

He hesitated, trying to think of the best way to phrase it. "You said…something about pretending to be a normal human again?'

Still Gar looked determinedly anywhere away from Dick's face. He let out an irritated huff. Only when more than a few moments passed, when Dick thought he was going to be ignored, did Gar respond: "So?"

"So…" Dick tried still careful, always careful, "we've got a while before I'm going to be able to get you out of all this tape safely. They used three whole rolls of it. If you wanted to…I'm here, I'm listening…"

"You'd know that I used to be a normal human if you ever bothered to ask." But when Dick said hesitantly that he'd believed Beast Boy's state had been the result of a mutation, even when Dick was making a real effort, Gar still waited it out a little while longer. He felt that he didn't deserve an answer so easily but the fact remained that Dick had still taken the time to ask there and then.

"When I was a kid…" he started a little grumpily, "I got bitten by an infected green monkey."

"I know you're mad at me but you don't have to go making things up. I'd really like the-"

"That _is_ the truth!" Gar shot back, offended even throughout how ridiculous his story sounded. "I got really sick from it so my parents had to use this untested serum just to save me. The serum mixed with the virus and well…you know I'm not good with all that science stuff. It changed me. I was just lucky I guess that I was always homeschooled from traveling around from continent to continent so much."

"So then…your parents…they died and the Doom Patrol adopted you?"

"I think we both know that the life of a superhero is never that easy." Gar shut his eyes, saying nothing more on the darker times in his life. Dick had his secrets and so Gar could have his own.

When Gar opened his eyes again he saw his reflection in a puddle of rain: the reflection that was a lie.

"Even this form…" he said, looking down at his brown hair and the eye color he'd not bothered to change, "it's not what I really used to look like. Blond hair and blue eyes again…it would've just been too real."

Dick nodded and he moved Gar's trapped arm the way he wanted it so he could make another incision. He continued to cut and he listened to whatever Gar had to say now that he felt free to say it, whether it was about any other personal tidbits of his life that Dick never knew or something completely trivial that was on his mind. Dick had thought it was the least he could do to listen to the most neglected of his friends for as long as Gar wanted to talk and Gar talked up until the very last piece of tape was cut.

Not expecting him to take it, Dick offered his hand so Gar wouldn't slip and fall from the smooth siding of the horse's back.

Gar accepted it anyway. Though Dick's pride was such that he couldn't say as much aloud Gar felt confident now that he was indeed wanted there when Dick could have easily walked away from Gar's anger and hostility. Gar brought back the vitality the academy fought so hard to stifle.

Gar slid a glance to his partner. "You _still_ owe me one though."


	16. Chapter 16

When they'd reached their room again the first thing Gar made sure to do was lock the door. He wasn't going to get pranked like that again when he hadn't even the opportunity to fight back, even as weak-muscled as his normal form was. Now that he'd mostly calmed down he could appreciate that his academy friends would be given a solid excuse for his supposed betrayal with Dick's elaborate sleepwalking lie. Sure, just like Dick he would have to ease away from that group to another now that the names of the three popular boys and their connections were cleared but…

Dick punched his fist through the wall.

"Ooo," moaned Gar very lowly and his abused wrists now seemed like a chump injury, "they're going to chop off your hand for that."

But to that Dick just stormed past Gar, picked up the newspaper scrap bearing Batman's autograph and slapped it over the gaping hole with a piece of tape. "_There_, it's fixed!"

"Dude-"

"We're back to square one!" he hissed and he was no less intense in his whispered tone. "No progress at all and this was _supposed_ to be our breakthrough! I jumped to conclusions, didn't even consider that it might not be them and it _wasn't!_ I joined their group, _I_ spied on them, _you_ spied on them for days on end! What if we get the same result from _everyone_ at this school? What if this all amounts to nothing?"

"_Relax_ man, it's not like we're on a deadline or anything." He pulled Dick away from the wall so he couldn't make a second hole. "Everyone messes up sometimes, even _you_. The rest of the team can survive without us for a little longer. Oh hey," he said, breaking his train of thought with another, "I've had this idea that I've wanted to try out for a while and now's a good a time as any. It'll be fun and it'll pump you up to start fresh tomorrow."

"What is it?" Dick felt he had to ask though he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

"Panty raid on the girl's academy!" Gar burst out like he'd been holding it in for days. "That's what frat houses do, right? You owe me one for bailing on me on that last mission so _that's_ what you're going to have to do to make it up to me."

As if he was suffering a heavy migraine, Dick buried his face into a hand and rubbed his temples. He'd had more than enough wasted time on this trip and that idea sounded like the biggest time waster of all.

"Oh, what?" Gar pressed when Dick said nothing. "If I leave you here you're just going to sit alone in the dark and _sulk_ because your plan didn't work. You're going to scan obsessively over the same files again and again for them to magically reveal something new."

"No I wasn't," Dick lied in a dead, emotionless tone that would've made Raven proud.

"Yes you were you big liar! Just come with me!"

"I'm _kind of_ involved with _Starfire_ right now. I'm pretty sure that would count as being unfaithful."

"I don't see any ring on your finger." And Gar grabbed his hand and waggled it around when his friend was depressed and didn't care either way. "She doesn't _own_ you yet. I won't tell her if you don't."

"All right, to make it up to you…I'll turn my back and let you do this if you want."

"But you're supposed to come with me! That's how they always do it in the movies!"

"You're not a girl that needs a whole pack with her just to go to the bathrooms! Go by yourself!" He could've argued it longer but his utter failure discovered only now at this late point sapped away his energy reserves. He collapsed on the bed and was silent for the rest of Gar's pleading.

His uptight leader had remarkably granted him permission to do a sneaky, underhanded deed but Gar didn't leap off at once to do it. He stood there before the bunks with crossed arms and a little pout on his face.

Suddenly that muse of Gar's that Dick had claimed to be dead returned in full force.

An evil glimmer formed in Gar's eyes. "_Hey Robin_, do you remember that one time we were fighting Red X on Jump's main bridge? You needed something small and agile to climb up the wires…something with human hands?

"Wasn't that the time you didn't use your regular monkey form and-? Wait a minute, don't you dare!"

But Gar _did_ dare; he had already shifted shape into a ring-tailed lemur. He squabbled on the back of a chair, dodging Dick with ease when he tried to catch him. The ringed tail was longer than the body but it danced out of Dick's reach every time.

Like a green dart, Gar scrambled up the top bedpost and Dick was a few seconds behind, having to get up normally.

"_Beast Boy…_"

While he still could, threatened under that very dangerous tone, Gar ripped out a chunk of the lemur fur, transformed into human in mid-leap and touched down on the floor.

He shot a menacing smile at his friend before he inhaled a mighty whiff of the fur to which he was deathly allergic.

At once the boy started sneezing so forcefully that it shook the whole of his body and parted his feet from the floor. For every sneeze he shifted shape into a different animal. Dick's migraine may as well as cracked a fissure down his skull the way he glared at Gar, who now had no control of his shapeshifting. His wolf form snuffed and fell to the floor only to be picked up again in another sneeze by his pig form. Every time there was a new voice and a thud to the floor and, although the walls were relatively thick, it was something just begging to be discovered by the rest of the school.

So caught up was Gar in sneezing that Dick yanked him to the window in all those changing forms and shoved him through.

"Here's hoping you change into something with wings," he called after a little derisively, jumping out after.

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"_AH-CHOO!_" Gar changed into a giraffe. "_AH-CHOO!_" He turned into a beaver.

"You _really_ didn't think this through, did you?" Dick had to question in his snide way.

True, Gar's plan had gotten Dick to come with him down the hillside and through the woods to Cherrywood so late at night but Gar couldn't think straight enough past his sneezing to gloat in the victory.

Finally, when Dick couldn't stand it anymore: "Change into something without a nose so you don't have to breathe in the dander!"

"Uhhh…_AH-CHOO! AH-CHOO!_" It took Gar a few tries to sift through the thousands of animals in his arsenal but he came upon his octopus form and the many-legged cephalopod landed beside Dick with a squish. The 60 pound green octopus crawled along the grass, wiping away the dander where his nose would've been, and Dick's shoulders drooped so low in indignation of it all that he could barely keep himself walking.

"Hey, that worked!" said Gar, back up to his friend's height in his human form. "No more stupid lemur allergy, yea!"

"Yea," Dick echoed in a voice much less thrilled. Only when they'd reached about the middle half of the woods did he seem to perk up from his down mood and it wasn't because of what their outing was supposed to entail.

Somewhere in their walk the woods had become not so untouched. Deep scratches marked up patches of the grass and a few trunks of the trees; they way they were marked they were fresh, no less than a week or two old.

Without being told, Gar morphed into a bloodhound to pick up a scent. He changed back. "I don't smell a bear or anything, just a few girls." He scratched his head. "These woods are pretty creepy this late at night; I'll bet this place is just a stand-in cemetery for them to do a séance."

Dick traced his fingers over the deep scars in the earth. "Why would they mark up the ground?"

"I don't know, tributes from the elements or something? That hocus-pocus stuff is Raven's department, not mine." He brushed it off. "Whatever, they're just a bunch of uptight academy girls that need to let stuff out sometimes."

It didn't seem to cause Gar any undue stress but Dick couldn't help looking back on the scene once or twice. After that, after they'd reached a safe spot in the trees at Cherrywood, Dick was straight back to his communicator to check stats, record notes to himself, things he would've done back at the dorm room. Gar had managed to make him come but he couldn't make him participate and enjoy it.

"Well…" Gar said, mulling it over, "they're probably done with any pajama parties for the night but if they're asleep they won't notice…" As if he was the announcer for his own abilities, he turned into a little green mouse and scurried along onto his own little self-assigned side mission.

There was no building a labeled pest couldn't penetrate and so Gar found his way into one of the dorm rooms soon enough. Though it was technically robbing, no girl would notice if one undergarment was missing from a whole drawer. The first drawer was very tempting but he had no intention of robbing any one girl blind…not when he could have a variety.

"Hee," – his cheeks pink in delight, Gar pulled back the spandex on a blue one – "this is awesome, so _lacy_." He nudged his partner who was as always absorbed in his work. "Want some swag, Robbie? I might share if you ask me _nicely_."

"_No!_" Dick's cheeks burned pink too but in anything but delight.

"As if you've never fantasized about raiding Star's drawers before, Mr. Noble." But Gar was more than ready to get pounded for that and he dodged it with ease. "I think this is a good amount to keep me happy for a while."

"Good, then let's get-!"

"But it'd be _perfect_ if I had one of Brooke's," Gar said dreamily as if that piece would be the crowning gem. "I don't need to see any of the other girls; I already know she's the prettiest one here. Do you think she's going to call me?"

It was too much to ask that he'd get though something like this painlessly. Dick scowled and banged his head back against the tree trunk.

"She's just playing hard to get, I know," he assured himself of when Dick didn't say the same. "It's always more fun if you have to chase them and…and – wait!" All of a sudden Gar didn't seem so blissful over the array of panties. He took a whiff of one.

"You're _really_ pushing it here," Dick commented, rolling his eyes to the sky.

"Huh? There's no scent! Not on a single one of these!" It seemed to confuse Gar to no end. Everything had a scent. "Did my nose go all wonky from that lemur allergy or something? Here," he said, shoving a piece over, "you-"

"Not happening."

"Oh quit being such a stiff and just check it out!" His friend would never do so willingly without great prodding so Gar saved them both some time and flung a lacy pink pair into Dick's face.

A tremor shook the boy from bottom to top. He was motionless and his spine was a straight rod as the girly panties fell a little past his cheek. It would positively be the worst time ever for Starfire to call and yet he couldn't move to turn off his communicator.

"Well?" Gar prodded, shaking at his friend's shoulder for a response. "What do you smell?"

"Err…f-flowers?"

"Yeah I know, me too," Gar agreed, completely overlooking his friend's stress. "That's just those little scent packets; that special, wonderful smell that any pretty girl has is totally gone. Ugh, this swag is like a bunch of soulless shells! I don't want them anymore!"

Dick pried the thing off from his face. "This _still_ counts for me making it up to you."

The boys got up to leave, in very opposite moods of the outcome of the situation, but they hadn't gone far from their cover when a light flashed on.

They ducked down at once back into the bushes. It had taken some doing on Dick's part to convince the headmaster that Gar had sleepwalked his way past a door with a security key but to do it again where their destination was two miles away would be stretching it too far. It wasn't as though sleepwalking was contagious and he could catch it too.

They'd ducked down so fast that they only now realized that the light came from a dorm room and not a flashlight from another overzealous security guard. Nevertheless, they were stuck there until the light flashed back off.

"Hey, it's Brooke!" Gar said excitedly in a hushed whisper, quite forgetting the danger of being caught. "And that Rowan girl, what are the-?"

"Shh!" The room was on the first level and its window was open so Dick wasn't just being paranoid.

The redheaded girl Rowan went straight for her computer and switched it into start up mode. As she waited for it to boot up, Brooke took a seat across from her roommate and the girls started talking. The boys had to strain to listen in.

"It's been 24 hours since the last assimilation," said Brooke. Her tone was so decidedly serious that Gar had trouble believing it was the same girl that had flirted with him before. "Have you discovered any new potential subjects in your missions downtown? We were separated last time."

"Don't talk down to me," her friend responded in that same blank voice. "I am eight number ranks your superior."

"What the heck are they talking about?" Gar whispered as quietly as he dared. Even if he and Dick weren't familiar with the workings of high school what they were hearing was anything but usual dialogue between high school girls.

"Do the girls get more free time in the city than we do?" Dick wondered aloud. If that were true it was a drastic change from the last time he was there and one he had difficulty believing the school-board would permit.

Brooke gave a cunning grin. "A number is nothing more than a number when it's carved from the same mold."

"What about that boy at the café?" As soon as Rowan ignored her friend's retort, moved on to say that, Gar leapt a little in anticipation. "Are you going to follow up on that? I'm aware that we are much occupied with the mission but he seemed interested from what I could tell and he is from the boy's academy we have our eye on. That he could communicate with animals was very impressive."

Only now did Dick's gloom vanish entirely and his focus was in top form in this suspicious exchange. He hung on their every word with the same single-minded drive as he'd had all week on the popular boys. He was so focused on not missing a single word that he was taken by surprise when Gar instead focused on sight with his binoculars and disrupted that concentration.

"Dude, what the-?! Whoa, that Rowan girl has a skull piercing!"

"What!?" Dick hissed back. He was plenty sure that trepanning was an act far out of line for a normal teenage girl and so he grabbed one end of the binoculars at once. They yanked the one set of binoculars back and forth in great desire to see but soon enough each settled for one lens.

"Hey, that's that same adapter cord that Chad and Bradley had!" Gar recognized that quarter-sized plug at once when the girl picked it up. He hadn't bothered to mention as much before when the popular boys had been cleared but that bit of information came rushing back to him then.

They were only putting all the pieces together before it happened but were no more ready for it when Rowan plugged the cord directly into her brain. From the side view they saw of her Rowan's pupils completely disappeared and her blank sockets glowed. The computer screen flashed masses of information at lightning speed but her blank sockets seemed to absorb it all. The screen flashed off and on.

"She's recharging her system," Dick somehow knew from a glance alone.

Far from wanting to look anymore, Gar pulled away from the binoculars with much anxiety. With the exact opposite reaction, Dick pressed the binoculars harder against his face as if to witness every detail of the girls who were clearly not normal girls.

His eyes flicked back to Brooke for a second and he threw his binoculars away at once.

"She's dialing your number! Quick, shut it off!" But even he wasn't perfect and he hadn't noticed in time. The boys each scrambled for the communicator on Gar's belt, neither trusting the other to get to it in time, but the ring sounded like a shriek in the quiet night. The communicator was only allowed one ring before Gar popped out the batteries but the damage had been done.

Both girls whipped their heads round to the window, to the exact place where they laid in hiding.

Rowan ripped the cord from her head, ruthlessly like she was ripping away one of her own limbs. She joined Brooke on her straight-shouldered march to the window and now that they had been discovered there was no more reason to hide. As they walked, their mouths stretched back along their faces further than any mouth should go, up to their cheekbones, and perfect teeth were replaced with jagged metal ones. Their arms retracted and the normal skin pulled apart to reveal deadly metal claws. Their pupils vanished and their eyes burned blood red.

All the while the boys could only stare but Dick was the first to recover when those same twin red beams lit up from all of the other dorm rooms all at once.

Even though he had precious little seconds, Dick calmly retrieved his communicator and dialed a number.

"Uh…Batgirl?"

"Oh hey, Robin," she returned on the other end and she sounded much cheerier than she had on their last visit. "I haven't had a whole lot going on in the city right now: a couple muggers and an old lady purse snatcher. How's the case going? Any leads?"

"_Yeeeees_," he dragged out a little in dry humor when there were so many beams on him that his skin had turned red.

"We need backup!" Gar blurted out, getting into the picture when Dick didn't immediately elaborate. "Right now, five minutes ago, _yesterday_, just fly those little bat wings over here as quick as you can!"

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Oh the power of misdirection! Mwahahaha! (High-fives J.K. Rowling) Who'd have ever thunk it was the students themselves being smuggled and the boys were at the wrong academy the whole time? Ha! Now they've got evil killer robots from space on their hands! Yipes! I'm a writer who loves her reviews so please tell me what you think! :D

Don't worry, explanations to follow in 17!

Arual-san


	17. Chapter 17

Allergy season sucks so much. : ( If anyone wants to set their flamethrowers to incinerate and wipe out all the stinking ragweed from the face of the planet I'd be much obliged. Evil devil plant! Grrrr! XD

Action chappie! Hooray! : D

Arual-san

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The android doubles of the girls of Cherrywood Academy had shed their false skins and come out into the open. They knew exactly where the boys hid in the shrubbery so Dick and Gar too no longer felt any need to hide. They both came to a stand as the girls approached the windows and shattered the glass. They crouched less like girls and more like lionesses and leapt out onto the grounds.

Red eyes burned with wicked artificial life and the claws that looked like they could cut through any metal clicked in anticipation. The portion of the student body of Cherrywood enlisted to attack was an army of some one-hundred…against two.

So many burning red eyes that promised a painful death did no small thing to intimidate Gar but he was no powerless civilian and he wasn't alone against this threat. He took a strong stance and glared right back at them all.

Gar called to his side, "Just as easy as picking off those tin cans of Slade's, right man?"

He was given no response and the front row of androids started crouching again like deadly cats, ready to pounce on their prey.

"Uh…Dick?" Gar tried again, getting a little worried, but when he had the nerve to look away from the androids for a second he saw that his friend wasn't at his side anymore at all. He was several yards away and running fast.

"Huh?" It was the only word Gar could utter at the inconceivable thought that his fearless leader was actually running away.

Seconds later and his brain was still stalled.

"Huh?"

He snapped right out of his stupor when a flurry of motion moved in his peripherals. There was no time to breathe, no time to think, Gar just reacted and morphed into turtle and retreated into his shell. Blades slammed into the little shell but it was a tough nut that none could break. A turtle was a great animal for defense but it served no other purpose and while the androids pulled back to strike again he switched to a little green bunny that was a little green blur as it raced away from being target practice.

Dick had gotten some distance between himself and the androids but in a form built for speed Gar caught up to him in seconds. He changed back to human and they were head and head.

"Didn't we just have a big serious talk about you not _bailing_ on me!?" Gar demanded, flapping his arms to spend his offended anger. "What gives!? The fight was back there, back _there_, not _here!_ Why are we here _running away_, Robin!?"

"Robin?" Dick repeated in a dry tone. "Do you see any "Robin"? No uniform, no mask, I'm _not_ Robin right now! If you knew anything about the way alter-egos are supposed to work you'd know that mine is supposed to be a spineless coward!"

"Why didn't you _say_ that then!?"

"I thought you could figure it out yourself! _You_ were the one that said not to treat you like a baby!" And while Gar grumbled over that a little Dick carried on before he could complain any further. "You heard what those girls said: they have a single-minded intelligence and you can bet they've been programmed exactly how to combat the crimefighters of Gotham. Not many people our age know how to fight the way I do; if one of them was to figure out who I was, taking down that one android wouldn't be enough. After their next assimilation they would _all_ know."

Gar was about to put in a word but was cut off, Dick only taking a breath in between his next lecture.

"From what I've heard, Martian Manhunter's dealt with this sort of joint operation before. The students are being sold as slaves to disreputable planets and being replaced in that same stroke with exact replicas. They're sneaking around replacing humans until they have a large enough army to launch a full-scale attack on the city." His brain worked too fast for his tongue to keep up with and he took a breath. "Looking at it now, starting the launch point at a private academy is a stroke of brilliance. The most powerful names in the city don't have time to be parents and, the few times they see their kids, most treat them only like accessories and future heirs. They'd hardly notice a replica made to look like their daughter. Once the girls went back home on break they could take down those powerful names and the operation head could seize control of their companies and assets."

Again Gar tried to talk but still Dick wasn't finished and said breathlessly, "All that breaking glass from the windows should have triggered an alarm. Since it didn't we know that all of Cherrywood has been infiltrated, not just the students. They were moving on to our academy next."

"Well I'm _happy_ you're so excited about all of this!" Gar butted in a little loudly all so that he wouldn't get cut off again. "But how is running away going to fix anything?"

"You don't have any ties to your alter-ego except a fake distant relationship to me. I'm not so lucky."

"Oh…right," Gar sighed, seeing where his leader was going without the need for elaboration. "I get to be the diversion while you head back to get your-" They'd been too focused on the other and too confident that there was enough distance between them and the girl-androids so the attack came as a surprise. Two androids came down with razor-sharp claws and the boys ducked off in either direction so the androids' claws became buried in the ground and stuck.

Gar took a gasp of air at how fast and deadly the androids were, how close a call it had been a second time that night. His luck couldn't hold out like that forever. In those few seconds on the ground, he saw the scars on the trees and earth, those things he had brushed off so easily before.

Only now that he was on the ground did he glimpse a sparkle of something else too: a girl's bracelet. This wasn't the first time the androids had chased down humans that had found out too much. Gar realized with a sinking feeling that the discolored grass on the track field that resulted from a teleportation beam – their one clue – had been the fate of the last unlucky girl that out of her friends had been the closest to getting help.

The girl's academy had been infiltrated and there had been no one to trust. The boy's academy was the closest bet and the signals from any cell phones were sure to have been blocked by the advanced robotic forms.

"Why didn't the girls just scream for help when they got to the boy's academy and-?" Gar got his answer when another more rational android fired a stun gun at him when he continued to talk. He didn't need Dick to tell him that a stunned student would be much less appealing to alien buyers but still more preferable to the operation than that same student blowing the lid off of the whole thing.

A handful of the androids first to notice their eavesdropping were ahead of their siblings by several feet and the boys were forced to defend themselves. Dick could only avoid and evade and send their androids crashing into the other in their eagerness to get him but Gar transformed into a great green hippo and stomped over all that he could.

Bare circuits sparked and robotic limbs had been torn away from bodies at the hippo's girth.

Exceedingly faster than a human could heal from such injuries, the circuitry began to repair itself. Like reanimated corpses, separated limbs crawled back along the grass to the owners they had fallen from.

"But that's not fair!" Gar yelled at them all.

The rest of the androids were closing in fast and would be on them in only seconds. While he still could, Dick landed a well-placed kick to Android Rowan's deteriorating neck and severed it completely. He grabbed the now disembodied head and looked to his friend.

"Gotcha!" said Gar back, recognizing the signal. "Diversion time!"

He shapeshifted into a bird for height and then back into the octopus form he'd donned earlier that night. He squirted out the ink that the animal used to confuse predators and hit the first wave of twenty.

The Titan leader vanished from the battlefield in that same instant.

Under his cover in the woods, certain he had a free road ahead, Dick spared himself a single glance back.

The first wave was temporarily sightless but all that more deadly in their rage and, now that Gar had figured out their stun-gun programming if he were to make a sound, the next androids used a different tactic. Metal strips broke off from their arms and joined together in hula-hoop-sized loops that spun in furious circles like so many energized frisbees. It was a teleportation device – the very same that had captured every one of the previous victims. Not only did Beast Boy have to fight alone against so many enemies, he had to be as stealthy as the most able of his animal forms to avoid each and every device. He switched off between destroying robots and destroying teleportation devices. He switched forms many more times than in previous fights just to avoid the beams and that in itself was tiring.

If BB slipped up once and got snagged by a beam it would be over for him.

Clutching the android head tighter, Dick picked up his pace. Any one of the Titans could only undertake for so long such a daunting task of fending off such an army. Both boys knew full well that the diversion was doomed to failure.

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The woods flashed by and thinned out at a far faster pace than they had the first time Dick had passed through them but that still wasn't quick enough for him. He didn't slow down once; he jumped every stone and loose tree root like he already knew it was there. When the android head tried to take a bite out of him with her shark-like teeth he unconsciously ripped off his pajama sleeve and stuffed it into the head's mouth, wrapped the remainder around its eyes. He had more pressing things on his mind.

Without a pause in stride, Dick kicked out his mini grappling hook from his ankle band, got it going and let it fly onto the open window that was his dorm room. He left the head on the ground and climbed the wall.

He had been relishing the chance to turn back into Robin again but he speed-dressed now and his alter-ego was gone in less than a minute. Going directly from the room into the hallway would have been faster; he itched to do it and get back to Beast Boy faster but he couldn't show a connection to Dick Grayson by being in his room. Robin jumped back down onto the grounds, grabbed the head and made a show of entering the academy again in the way a masked vigilante would by picking the locks.

He'd been expecting the robot doubles of Chad and Bradley that greeted him upon entry but he didn't know just how many other boys had been replaced until that moment. There were about fifteen that marched the hallways to meet him.

"If you're copies," Dick murmured, thinking his thoughts aloud, "then you must be just as lousy at soccer."

He pitched the robot head and gave it a powerful roundhouse kick right into the center of them. It knocked over the lead four and, in that moment of distraction, Robin was on the rest of them with his retractable Bo staff. There was no keeping this under wraps from the rest of the school. He felt no need to hold back and set to work on decimating the lot in the narrow space.

They were all the same Slade bots he'd taken down several times before only with knives for hands and superior AI. It was only a workout as Robin dodged when he needed to, struck at every opening. He'd needed a good fight like this but he attacked in more aggression than usual to separate the robots into pieces to give himself more time.

He kicked off the head of one and sent that same foot crashing back into another that hoped to take him from behind. The android body slammed into the wall and only then did Robin take time to notice the students all flooding out into the halls over the mighty din.

"Get out of here right now!" he ordered all around.

One look to the robots on the ground formerly thought to be classmates was all the convincing the boys needed to leave the creepy "Twilight Zone" experience far behind. They ran off in droves and Robin was left to take down the final three androids.

He grabbed up the head and raced off for Room 20 even as the robotic pieces were repairing and reconnecting. There the specialized adapter cord waited in plain sight. Robin switched the computer on and waited for it to boot up.

"R-Robin?" a terrified voice asked from behind him. "What are you – w-what's going on?"

Robin turned to see Regis cowering under his blankets with all the fear that the robot he'd thought to be his friend Chad would come back to finish him off. Robin answered simply and with no sympathy, "Standard hostile takeover of Gotham City."

Regis gave a squeak and retreated further into the covers.

Back to business, Robin swirled back on the chair to the screen and he plugged the adapter cord into the robot head. Only when he was met with a password prompt did he remove the gag and blindfold from the head.

"Hello," he greeted as if her presence was new to him. "One of my undercover students just delivered you to me. Could I get a little help here?"

She snapped her razor-sharp jaws at him in response. "The Bird! You will be the first my sisters will destroy."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. Lucky I always come prepared." He went for a certain less frequented compartment near the back of his utility belt and inserted the flash drive into the hard drive. "This device is a code-breaker that can process and break any known sequence of numbers and letters at a thousand entries per second. If you're going to cheat by repairing yourselves," – he cracked a grin – "then I'm going to cheat right back."

In fury, the Rowan head snapped her jaws in the only way she could move, she cursed his name, but she couldn't move from the table without a neck. Robin typed in the commands on his flash drive to initiate "seek and destroy" mode as soon as the code was cracked and access to the mainframe was granted. He stuffed the gag back into the head's mouth so she wouldn't attract any attention and headed back down the hallways. The androids he'd only just taken down had repaired and Robin ran past them onto the grounds to lure them away from the head.

Each one of them followed him like a herd of sheep and it was a time where one collective mind in several different bodies was a disadvantageous thing. The robots still bore dents and loose sparks from the last fight but were still plenty functional the second time around.

Robin didn't wait for them to close in on him, the clock was ticking and Beast Boy needed his help. He hadn't had more than a moment's rest yet and he couldn't stop now. He stabbed his Bo through the heads of two of the androids and they fell like stones. He hadn't the second to pull it back out again when more attacked so he kicked back, aiming for the exact same place he'd hit them the first time since second repairs wouldn't come as easily as first.

A deadly claw lunged down at him and Robin was ready but when a severed arm suddenly grabbed his ankle and pulled him to the ground he wasn't so ready anymore. He used his free leg to block the attack with a steel-toed boot.

The claw at his leg dug into his flesh with a death grip and the android above reared back its other arm. The other arm retracted its dangerously sharp utensils to deliver a death blow while other androids closed in during Robin's vulnerable position.

With only seconds between life and death, someone else would have panicked.

His hands were still free even if the rest of him was occupied and they instinctively went for the thing that would help him most. His red birdarang flashed and the imposing android's leg was severed from its body. It waved its arms in panic but it still fell to the ground hard.

The robotic hand still on his leg felt like it would soon sever his foot from the rest of him but the other androids were too close. Even with an unusable leg he was still Robin and he fanned out more birdarangs and let them fly, hitting a vital area dead-on every time.

Wrenched apart a second time, the androids still weren't finished and continued crawling towards him in all their severed pieces. Robin took his last birdarang and hacked at the hand trapping him. He had to hack off three of its fingers before he could wrestle it off.

The ankle was bruised purple from the pressure and laced with a few cuts but Robin could still keep going and he leapt to his feet before the robot pieces could reach him again for round three. He allowed himself a quick breath of air only because he had to, retrieved his Bo and birdarangs and started off back to the woods.

The boy had only reached the far end of the track field when he was faced with another obstacle. This time he wasn't so much threatened as he was slightly amused.

It was the headless body of an android girl, lurching forward with widespread "feeling" arms.

"I'm surprised you got this far," he said, knowing perfectly well that Rowan's body couldn't see or hear him. Even if all of her primary senses were blocked, her claws were still functional and her sensors tuned, probably to full capacity, to any vibrations in the ground.

Robin slunk to a side so that her path was clear. Even in steel-toed boots, he circled his footing round and planted each step with a feather-light touch. She hesitated a couple times but was still struck in the small of the back before she ever pinpointed his position.

"I can't just have you rejoining with your head." And before the headless android could get up and attack him, Robin handcuffed her ankle to the nearest lamppost. "Be good and wait here."

She sensed the hands on her ankle and lunged for him but too slow. She clawed blindly in every direction but he was already far out of her radius and gone down the hill.


	18. Chapter 18

Whew! Action is always so hard to write but I just love the results! :D Yikes, this chapter got really dang long before I finished it! This chapter is dedicated to AniLovesMe for officially breaking my former review record. Give yourself a pat on the back, Ani, for being awesome!

Arual-san

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Beast Boy's ink screen temporarily blinded the first wave of twenty but the following waves climbed over and shoved aside their weakened comrades with little regard. The metallic forms were easily replaced and more were waiting back at the academy in the form of the staff. He'd gone from bird to octopus but before he'd even landed he switched form again to combat mode.

When he was vastly outnumbered the way he was and flying solo he could only fall back to the dinosaurs that were the heavyweight champions of his repertoire. Ankylosaurus was a tank in animal form with its rock-hard spiked hide; Beast Boy rammed through a horde of them so he was in the thick of it and he swung that powerful tail club round, sending several to the ground crushed.

Each of the several he'd knocked down got up again, even with injuries that would've killed a normal human.

"Why-" Beast Boy started and he knocked them down again more harshly.

"Won't-" He switched to the small animal form of a mouse to hide in the grass when a flying disc teleporter came his way, transformed back again into a pterodactyl and snatched up several of the discs in his jaws.

Going back to human, he touched down on a tree and hurled the energized rings at them one after another. "You-"

With the energy circulating in the rings, they exploded at once upon making contact with the androids. Tens of them fell in several mismatched pieces but still those limbs crawled along the grass like arachnids to rejoin their bodies.

"_Die!?_" Out of frustration, Beast Boy just jumped up right there and snatched another ring out of the air just before it had been about to snatch him. If he'd been meaning to do that he'd probably not have succeeded so well but he didn't think on that now and he whipped the ring to the severed pieces to break them up into fourths.

The smoke hadn't yet cleared and already the rest of the still whole androids were scaling the tree. He of course wasn't going to wait for them to catch up to him and he again took for the skies to avoid getting swarmed. If his zombie games on their gaming system back home had taught him anything it had taught him that he _definitely_ didn't want to get swarmed. But even if the androids below couldn't reach him, their appendages flying in the air had become no small threat now that the AI in their systems had detected what his new strategy was. Suddenly they were speedy little air demons initiating complex formations in which to trap him in and suddenly the pterodactyl wasn't small or stealthy enough.

Had he been able to take a breath in between changing into a merlin falcon, Beast Boy might've scoffed. Zombies below and Geometry Wars above, this was no different than playing a video game…except that he was on expert mode with no extra lives.

Beast Boy hadn't scored a cool, undefeated 80 million on Geometry Wars for nothing.

They shot at him from below. The rings were swarming behind him, biting at his tail feathers every step of the way, and many more were on the sidelines waiting to box him in and cut off all escape. Merlins were no larger than pigeons and relied on speed and agility in their flight; it was why he'd selected the bird but he still had to remain sharp at every second. The rings waiting for him in every direction he turned were at all different heights, projecting their beams down below, and Beast Boy put on quite an aerial display weaving in and out of them while pursuing rings behind him were not so lucky.

One changed its positioning at the last second as he was passing by and that grace ended abruptly. He made a very un-birdlike move, tucked his wings in and fell like a stone just to evade the beam but had little time to recover before more were on him again. This was exhausting work and it was taking its toll. Soon he'd be too tired to sense when to make the right breakneck turn. Soon he'd mess up.

With that thought in mind, Beast Boy pumped his wings a little more to gain some speed. He used a pocket of air to coast above a group that hoped to slam into him and that group instead collided with the rings closest behind him in pursuit.

There was a little confusion in the explosion and Beast Boy used that. He was panting but changed back into a pterodactyl for its impressive wingspan and flapped straight up. They were all following him soon enough but once Beast Boy had gained enough height he switched back to human.

"Really hoping this doesn't blow up in my face," he thought aloud as he braced himself.

Many rings flew by out of his reach but Beast Boy seized hold of the top of one, gripped tightly and gave a harsh pull up. The flashing beam engulfed at least twenty of its siblings and eight androids watching below. They vanished.

"_Hah!_" he cried in between gasps for breath. "Eat tha-!" He didn't get to finish his sentence and the ring he was on was already bucking like a bull gone mad. There was nothing for him to sink his nails into on the smooth metal so Beast Boy just tried to hold tight.

The ring wasn't tempered to hold his weight so its flight patterns were off and it bumped into several other rings as it tried to buck him off. Beast Boy held on for dear life when it was all he could do and not fall into the center where the beam waited. It finally succeeded in shaking him loose but the boy fell straight onto another one.

This time he was ready to do what he was best at with machinery: breaking it, of course.

Beast Boy flipped back the control panel on the ring and started messing with anything that he could to disable the AI. It took him four tries, four leap frogging to different rings, before he'd turned one into his own personal hoverboard.

That was when the rings started disappearing in droves but the firing squad picked up from below. Now that they weren't shy about shooting at him for risk of hitting their own it was like deadly rain coming from the ground up. It might've been risky before but staying up there any longer under that kind of fire was suicide. Beast Boy kept moving without going anywhere, luring all of the rings in before he pressed the self-destruct button.

He shoved himself away from the ring, dreading using his waning energy to change one more time.

Robin would be coming soon and so would Batgirl and that thought gave him the strength to become a hummingbird instead of the sitting duck he was in human form.

A hummingbird was a troubling sight to see in a pitch dark patch of sky. Flapping his tiny wings faster than an eye could glimpse was the closest thing to a break he had but when he turned his bead black eyes up he saw that all of the rings had been destroyed.

The rings were gone and so were a good number of the androids but as he looked to the girl's academy he saw the second wave begin to form.

Beast Boy felt very much like collapsing and taking five right there at the daunting sight. His tiny bird chest pumped like it was going to explode but he took several deep breathes, envisioned an animal that was heavy and tough…

"Nice boom-boom, BB!" a feminine voice called, seeming to appear from nowhere. "But I can top it!"

Beast Boy turned round to see. He panicked and used the hummingbird's freakish agility to give Batgirl an extremely wide berth when she was coming in on a jetpack faster than he could ever fly. She was coming in much too fast to the horde to ever be able to stop in time.

Beast Boy itched to intervene, to cry a warning but there was nothing he could do in only seconds to spare. He need not have bothered. Batgirl had the confidence with her pack to have the angle and timing down perfectly. Just as she was about to make impact, she pulled her arms out from the straps and touched down on the grass with a tuck and roll.

A mighty explosion rocked the ground as the jetpack fuel tank exploded with the androids on collision.

Even if they'd just rebuild again, Batgirl just taken out an entire wave in a second when Beast Boy hadn't been able to do as much in a half hour. Batgirl however turned her back on the blazing ruin like it was nothing special.

When Beast Boy just gawked at her with a dropped jaw she crossed her arms smugly. "Problem solved. Want to go grab a slice of pizza?"

She wasn't quite so smug when she found out she'd misunderstood his reaction.

"You – get – _jetpacks!?_"

"Huh?" Her heroic pose was suddenly lost. Despite herself, Batgirl looked back to the flames. "Yeah, I guess so."

"And you just _destroyed_ that wonderfully awesome thing!?" he continued like she'd just destroyed something sacred and beautiful. "That – that's like the dream every little kid has, to own a jetpack, to be able to fly one of them! You – you're a dream killer!"

She waved it off, annoyed when she wasn't praised for her tricky maneuver. "Oh big deal, the boss man trashes his equipment all the time and I've got like ten backup packs back at HQ."

Beast Boy's jaw dropped even lower and so did his resentment of the whole thing. He wasn't so distracted that he didn't act instinctively to crush a piece of machinery that had very nearly repaired itself. "Man, Robin won't even trust me with a bicycle and you get _multiple_ jetpacks!?" He proceeded to violently stomp all the other moving metal bits and pieces. "Why don't _I_ ever get cool stuff!?"

"Because Robin's a stingy jerk," Batgirl supplied cheerily. "Come on, everyone knows that." She took his lead stomping on the moving robot parts, preventing them from reforming entirely. Many crawled out of the flames but still many others remained lifeless, never to move again.

"So," Batgirl started with some irony, holding out a robot arm back as it tried to claw her face off, "it would appear that these robots automatically repair themselves." She quickly moved the arm onto other parts so that it destroyed them instead.

"_Yes_." Beast Boy stomped a pile again and again and again until it was nothing but nuts and bolts and only then did he officially kill it. There were so many that it was a constant job to make sure that none fully formed again but they couldn't just dismantle every piece as thoroughly as Beast Boy had done to his pile. They'd be exhausted before they'd ever finished that group and the next one that was coming in fast.

"So what are we supposed to do?" Beast Boy asked, a little exasperated when the first wave had taken so much out of him and when they weren't even defeated yet. "These guys have a lot more endurance than us. I don't know about you but I can't just pop my arm back into place if it goes flying across the meadow either. Any bright ideas?"

"I've got a computer virus hacking into their systems as we speak."

The two turned to see Robin sliding down the hillside, anything to save time. Whether as Robin announced himself before he re-invited himself into the group, the deeper voice that echoed behind the two made them both give an instinctive jump, Beast Boy's more pronounced.

"No one piece of machinery is invincible."

While Batgirl recovered quickly enough, Beast Boy gave a shudder in that he'd never noticed the Bat's presence until Batman had wanted to make himself known. The Gotham Times weren't exaggerating about that whole "Shadow of the Night" thing. Once his heart had resumed beating, Beast Boy knew that if ever he was glad about something he was immeasurably glad that the Batman was on their side.

"H-how long were you standing there?" Beast Boy asked sheepishly, resisting with great difficulty the urge to back away from the Bat's looming presence. He wasn't sure he wanted to know.

Batman had seemed to have been staring in the depths of the shadows the trees cast but he moved his head down to regard the green Titan. "If you want to know you must be as a blind man and not rely on your eyes."

The boy's face went blank. "Uh…kay."

"You're _doing_ it again," Batgirl said with a tired little moan.

"Doing what?"

"Being creepy," answered Robin and there was little trace of empathy in his voice as he stepped to the oncoming forces, Bo in hand.

"Don't go getting ahead of yourself," Batman warned, though he stayed perfectly stationary as his ward charged forward. "As I said, no piece of machinery is invincible. Even if they are able to repair themselves, even if they are lifeless shells without the one mind that controls all-"

"I haven't given you the rundown on _anything_," Robin cut in before Batman could take over the mission that was his. "How did you know-?"

"About the one collective mind part?" Batman finished, interrupting Robin without remorse after he himself had been interrupted. "Every mission across the galaxy, every aspect of it assigned to the Justice League is recorded in a database. I've not dealt with this particular menace personally but one of my teammates has and I can tell you that although the androids are empty shells they still require a small computer chip to function."

Batgirl and Beast Boy were apt with attention like students under an educated professor. That for Batgirl was fine but Robin was annoyed to see one of his own teammates taking someone else's directions over his own. He might've been beyond annoyed but he could see how obvious it was that Beast Boy was still tired and recovering from the first diversion and wanted to hold out for a strategy.

"The computer chip should be about the size of a large postage stamp and-"

"And it's not located in the head," Robin contributed, coming to stand beside Batman instead of before him. "The girl's head that I took continued to function long after it was separated from its body. We need to locate where that chip is – break it and you kill the robot. We should start by aiming at its heart, that seems like a good bet and-"

"There are many different versions of this android on the market," Batman said matter-of-factly. "I don't believe I enlightened you over what type of alien Renwei was, which planet he receives his wares from. Surely you don't believe his species' heart is located at the left breast?"

"Is he Tamaranean?" Robin bit through his teeth with dwindling patience. He set his fist to a different place on his chest where he knew Starfire's heart beat, without reservations when it was concerning a soulless machine.

"Geez, hostile much?" Beast Boy whispered under his breath to Batgirl. Normally he would've been caught but the Dynamic Duo's attention was no longer on either of them at all. They were just arguing now, trying to take command.

"Oh, let's just go," sighed Batgirl, long since defeated when it came to the two stubborn heroes. "We've got our mission guidelines. They can join in whenever they want to stop ripping pieces out of the other. I wouldn't hold your breath though."

The next wave would be on them in minutes. Beast Boy put his hands on his knees and crouched to take in a deep breath before plunging into battle yet again and soon enough he was running alongside Batgirl, bringing the fight to them.

This time the androids were fakes comprised of both the remaining student and the staff. Some of those old ladies were creepy enough as they were without the glowing red eyes but the two teens threw themselves right into the thick of it. By the sounds behind, the Duo's quarreling had come to an end when they were met with both the remaining androids from the first wave and the ones from the boy's academy that had followed Robin but Beast Boy and Batgirl couldn't spare a glance to see how they were faring.

An android's sharpened claws spun madly spun like egg beaters and lunged for Batgirl. The girl dodged when she couldn't block, looked for an opening. "Batman didn't tell us where those chips were, did he?"

"Don't think so," Beast Boy replied, changing back to human to pump himself up for round two. "That's okay, it'll be like an Easter Egg hunt…that _I'm_ going to win!" With that challenge stated, he changed into a gorilla and punched straight through an android's chest. His huge fist opened but with no computer chip and the android still moved so he moved onto the next one to try again.

"You're on _my_ home turf, Greenie!" Batgirl came back, making another attempt through an android's stomach. "Home team always wins!" Her blows dealt less damage and she found no chip either. She had to fall back to avoid getting shredded right after.

Meanwhile Batman and Robin had only found time to stop bickering when the mass of androids were out for their blood. There were so many all around that, even as legendary as they were told of in battle, they had to fight in close quarters for safety.

Robin had his Bo and Batman never needed more than his fists.

"I hope you haven't gotten rusty," Batman commented.

Although Robin couldn't be sure if it was said in an undermining way or in complete seriousness he charged the androids with an angered yell and added force all the same. He'd dealt with the Slade bots before; these were just upgrades with Swiss Army Knife appendages. There wasn't just one to deal with at a time but many and he did a rapid calculation of angles so that he blocked a strike to both his front and his back in the same stroke. In that second that the two robots were stuck in a standstill, before they had a chance to strike again, Robin gave his Bo a harsh pull back into one's collarbone and he sent a fist flying into the other one's chin, snapping back its metal neck and exposing its sparking circuitry.

There was still no computer chip in either location.

Normal no-name human lackeys may have given up at once in the very presence of the Dark Knight but not these false humans that had no free will of their own. They threw themselves at the Bat like their lives meant nothing and they did. Metal blades that were hands whirred from every direction but Batman was ready. All that he did to adjust was to remove his cape so that it would have no chance to hinder him.

In the few moments that Beast Boy could look away from his own fights he saw Batman and Robin fighting tirelessly, fists and feet flying in every direction in articulated martial arts that felled the enemy in one shot before they could come back for seconds. There were growing piles of metal bodies at each of their feet, each larger and in a greater state of disrepair that either Batgirl or Beast Boy could boast. They really were an amazing team without a superpower to speak of but as much as Beast Boy wanted to continue watching them that few moments was all he had time for.

He'd tried stabbing at eight more locations on his little "Easter Egg" hunt but still had come up empty, Batgirl too since she'd have made sure her victory was known.

They all continued fighting like they were for a good long time. Throughout it all, Robin couldn't help but wonder what was taking the download of his virus so long. He kept one arm and two legs focused on fighting but his other arm and his attention on his communicator. He'd had enough time to get down the android's fighting style and so it was like a dance where he knew every move to make before the other party did.

The download was only at 67% and not ascending with much speed. Only after a couple minutes did it even get to 74%.

"Grrr! Why does that application have to hook up to the net?" he growled to himself as he unconsciously punched an android's lights out. The server was bound to be heavily weighed down with the other computers at the academy, the ones the boys kept running all night to get their lists of music and movie downloads completed.

Robin growled again and he got his second wind to resume full attention to the fight. One could only fight so intensely, so constantly for so long and as strictly as he trained himself it would be pushing it to get a third wind.

As Beast Boy was trying to think up a new way to go about the search for the elusive chip, Batgirl suddenly cried out. She hadn't the foresight to remove her cape the way her mentor had done and it had gotten tangled up in a claw she had just dodged. It messed up her momentum and sent her crashing back to the ground.

Many more androids swarmed the fallen girl with the same whirring claws.

Much of battle was made up of split-second reactions and Beast Boy reacted.

Both of Batgirl's hands went in instinct for her utility belt, searching speedily for the thing that would save her when the blades were coming in fast. She heard a very strange roar that could only be described as a garbled mix between an elephant, tiger and alligator. The claws that had been about to tear her open were suddenly pulled back, the bodies seized in the massive jaws of a tyrannosaur.

The jaws with the banana-sized teeth chomped down less than a hand's length before Batgirl's face.

She screamed a scream so horribly terror-ridden that she may as well have been run through instead.

Beast Boy stomped away on his massive clawed feet and began chomping down on other hapless androids even as many jumped on his new large form and attacked. Batgirl remained frozen in place on the ground over the extremely close call but she'd been trained well. As more androids swarmed in to finish what the others had started she flicked out a smoke bomb to mask her location.

She only allowed herself a mighty exhale of air before she was back on her feet and running toward the green tyrannosaur nearly buried under clawing robots. Beast Boy swung his tail, he chomped his teeth over and over again but it wasn't enough.

The girl dug out from her belt something less effective that she'd not wanted to take the energy to use before. She flung the tiny device onto an android's back. It sent out an electromagnetic pulse that spread to all the rest of them trying to take Beast Boy down. He growled at the tiny shock of electricity but the androids all fell onto their backs like dead bugs.

Beast Boy went back to human and as soon as he did Batgirl yelled at him to get out of the middle of them. The pulse only stunned them and not for any longer than a minute. Batgirl had been about to throw a bomb on the group but her way was barred by still more of them.

"Heeey Batgirl?"

"N…ot…n…ow, Beast Boy," she heaved a little, notably slowing a little.

As he ran beside her, Beast Boy spat out a little computer chip he'd found when he'd been munching up the metal parts.

"Where'd you find that!?"

"Right here," Beast Boy said at once, pointing to a certain point on his leg, and without a bit of gloating when he too was feeling worn and soon unable to go on. He snapped it in half. "The manufacturers must have wanted to throw us all for a loop."

He'd been about to inform Batman and Robin but Batgirl beat him to the punch and with greater detail when neither could afford to look.

"Left femur, medial, distal end!"

Batman and Robin followed her directions in that same stroke, striking that exact place in the metal legs. Each emerged with a chip.

The playing field was finally even. The entire time any of the heroes could have been struck down never to rise in many different methods but not one had and now the androids no longer had the power of invincibility on their side. The four ducked and evaded and struck that same fatal spot again and again until there were piles and piles of deactivated robots all around, until only a scarce ten of the original two hundred remained.

The ten were all clustered together in a tight knit group, the collective mind pondering what options were left when its bodies were being closed in from every direction by Batman, Robin, Batgirl and Beast Boy.

Ten versus four, they were outnumbered but they fanned out into a circle for one last stand.

That last stand never came. Robin's virus uploaded at last and the reds of their eyes sparked. The spark traveled down the rest of them like an infection and they each dropped to the ground. A few spasms and they all went still.

That moment right there would've been an ideal moment to strike a heroic pose among the world's greatest detective superhero and his former sidekick but Beast Boy's mind was too exhausted to realize the opportunity he had missed. He collapsed onto the soft grass for a well deserved break. Batgirl's pride wasn't so great that she couldn't resist following his lead.


	19. Chapter 19

Hey I'm approaching 100 reviews for the very first time ever! Hooray! Reviewer #100 gets to be my new best friend! Lol!

Arual-san

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At the end of a fierce battle, androids strewn all around, Batman and Robin stood with dignified poise throughout their fatigue. Batgirl and Beast Boy however lay sprawled out on the grass panting like sled dogs run ragged on the snow. Already the Dynamic Duo was on their different communicators, working out the finer details of the case, arranging things and closing it up with the League and Commissioner Gordon. Neither mimicked the other; it was just a natural reaction and one they tackled separately.

Batgirl, a trained gymnast, was more in shape and so was the first to recover. She sprung up with a sudden burst of energy and slugged Beast Boy in the arm, almost hard enough to paralyze it.

"_Oww!_ What gives?"

"You scrawny little dork!" she yelled in harassment, wanting to hit him more but he backed out of her range and she hadn't recovered enough to follow. "You almost bit my face off!

"That?" the boy grumbled, rubbing his arm. "Oh please, I knew exactly where you were and the range of my-"

Every word she spoke grew higher in volume and intensity. "You do_ NOT_ transform into a T-Rex and _scare the living spit out of your teammate ON YOUR FIRST FIGHT TOGETHER, STUPID!_"

Suddenly a few feet's distance didn't seem safe enough. Still, it wasn't like Beast Boy wasn't tempered to being yelled at all the time by his regular teammates. "As if you scare me!" he huffed. "The girls on my team shoot laser death beams and scary dark energy from their hands!"

"You do _not_ want to get on my bad side, Greenie, powers or no," she said like she'd make him regret underestimating her. "Aside from that, I'm the one here who has solo experience on a city and doesn't have the lamest superhero outfit ever!"

"It's a stand-in!" he fired back over the outfit he hated just as much. He got back on the subject with fire. "Fine! Maybe I'll just leave the bad guys to their thing next time!"

"You do that! I had everything under control!"

"Yeah right, if I hadn't been there to save you-!"

"I would've thought of something else!" she came back. "You're the fanboy here; you should know that we Bats have our utility belts and are always prepared for anything!"

Beast Boy crossed his arms. "Except for taking off your cape so it didn't become your downfall."

"_Guys_," tried Robin with a sigh and he was immediately told by both parties to stuff it. They both kept arguing on until Batman himself broke it up. Neither dared to pursue it any further when it was him and there was a little hint of fear there instead of friendship.

"I won't argue with you over assignments," Batman told his ward with a little harshness to his tone before he addressed them all. "Batgirl, I want you to erase all evidence of the alien technology present. Leaving it be would be asking a tech-savvy criminal to recreate it. Robin and Beast Boy, now that Cherrywood Academy is vacant I want you to investigate the grounds for any further evidence that will help us locate the missing students. I'm returning to Birnamwood to calm the masses and to relay information to the headmaster. Break."

His long black cape whisked over the ground like a living shadow and he was off without another word.

"Hmmph," Beast Boy grumbled a little, but only when the Bat disappeared over the top of the hill. "I'll bet if we were working with Flash or Green Lantern we'd get a "Good job team" or something."

Batgirl shrugged to that but just because the boss had told her to quit didn't mean she was completely finished. Before the boys could head out to the girl's academy she pulled a certain device from her belt. "Hey _Beast Boy_," she said in a mocking tone. "Watch this!"

The green Titan turned and he saw a gun in her hands so small it should've been a toy. It was made up of glass vial the size of a ping-pong ball and filled with a strange shimmering indigo liquid. He was expecting bubbles or something from the wimpy thing but when she pulled the trigger…

_Whoosh! _

With the power of an explosion a long whip of fire blasted out from the nozzle and it consumed a whole pile of androids. The violet flames melted the metal there on the spot and Batgirl's expression couldn't have been smugger.

Beast Boy's shoulders went limp as he stared blankly at the scene. He snapped back out of it so fast he might've gotten whiplash. "_She gets a flamethrower too!?_ One drop and it has all that power!?"

Seeing as his partner would've complained over it for several minutes, Robin headed off the problem by dragging the other boy back by the scruff of his shirt in the direction of the girl's academy. It may've gotten them moving in the right direction but it didn't spare Robin any of Beast Boy's griping and he silently cursed his former teammate for ever putting the idea in his head.

"Can I get a flamethrower for Christmas?" Beast Boy pleaded, looking to Robin, finally noticing that his feet were moving backward.

Robin was as serious as Death itself. "Not then. Not ever."

"Aww, why not?" And he picked up his feet now to walk. "Batgirl has one, why can't-?"

"Because I don't want to wake up one morning in a ten foot deep crater where the tower used to be!"

"I wouldn't do that!"

"Yes you would!"

It was an argument doomed on his side from the moment Beast Boy asked but he still continued to pester Robin about it, not because he'd have ever thought that his stingy leader would cave in but to distract him from getting all dark and moody in that he was again being ordered around by Batman and following those orders like an underling.

Robin pulled out his scanner and was the first to enter one of the school's main doors. Beast Boy was a little after for having to retrieve the pajamas he'd left behind again when he'd transformed into a turtle and he went off in the opposite direction. This time they weren't groping blindly in the dark for any clues. This time their scanner's frequencies were wired to pick up any hint of the alien technology they'd presently uncovered, anything that shouldn't be there and they had free reign in the empty building.

Beast Boy moved the scanner round the empty corridors and the readings were only moderate near the dorms. He rounded a corner and the scales dropped to zero. It was like playing a very long, very boring game of Hot/Cold but just as Beast Boy was starting to go to auto-pilot the readings gave a high pitched beeping noise.

They had spiked into the orange zone.

Later than he should've, Beast Boy realized enough that their mission still wasn't technically over as long as he was still waving a scanner. He re-activated the generator rings and disguised himself again as a normal teenager but now that he had a trail he didn't stop to do so and kept running as he did. He made a left turn at the upcoming fork in the hall and it was the right turn to make as the scanner practically screamed that he was right on top of the signal.

Three doors were in the range of the red readings, any further and they turned back to orange. Since the whole school had been infiltrated it would've been the easiest thing to do to just take over one of these less used classrooms near the back of the building. He opened them both but all that was strange inside was a teacher with a sense of humor that had put a bowtie on the model skeleton.

He opened the last door. Any thoughts that a supply closet was an awfully lame place for the makeshift headquarters of a manufactured invasion force left his mind when he found a staircase leading down to a basement instead. Beast Boy no longer required the scanner so he set it down. He descended the steps and came to another door.

Once he unlocked it he praised his quick thinking to re-activate the rings.

About fourteen students were imprisoned in a three-walled glass cell pressed up against the wall. They were in all stages of dress: pajamas and uniforms, whatever time of the day each of them had been taken. They all sat without energy, even Chad and Bradley, the only boys of the group, hadn't the will to continue punching out the weakest wall past the several bruises it already had. Miserable, they'd resigned themselves to their fate along with the girls.

"Brooke…" Beast Boy breathed out, a little taken back on seeing her shiny head of chestnut hair. She'd pulled her knees to her chest and a look of forlorn pulled at her pretty face as she waited to be shipped off to an alien world like all her hapless classmates before her.

Beast Boy stared at her in a rather obvious way that should've earned some sort of reaction from the girl and it was only then that he found that he hadn't needed his quick thinking about the rings at all. The glass was a one way mirror and none of the prisoners inside could see him anyway.

There was strange technology lined up against the walls, computers, teleportation devices and other things occupying the spaces in the shelves that school supplies once did. There were deactivated androids lined up that had escaped Robin's virus that were like metal zombies waiting to return to life but Beast Boy ignored the technology that Cyborg would have adored and went for the axe from the emergency fire kit on the wall.

The cell appeared to be soundproof as well but the students still jumped off the walls and fell over one another in shock on feeling the vibrations coursing through the walls. The glass wasn't any thicker than a pencil but it held strong wherever Beast Boy bashed it. It wasn't going to yield to him; there would be no weak spots in the structure so he instead aimed for the lock. Thankfully it was a retro padlock rather than a coded lock, probably to cut unnecessary extra spending when they did the job just as well.

The students all scrambled away from the door in the little space they were provided. They couldn't have any idea of what could be happening without sight or sound to aid them.

The lock jangled around, every hit scarring its metal deeper, but Beast Boy kept accidentally hitting the little thing in different areas, opening new cuts instead of deepening previous ones.

Finally his hit struck true and the lock clattered to the ground. He opened the door and, as soon as the students could see something other than glass in several days, they all rushed out less like a group of pampered heirs and more like a horde of wild animals. Beast Boy was the dividing line and the students passed by either side of him, the girls all giving their thanks and Chad and Bradley reluctantly doing the same in respects to their cellmates, but there was one person that went neither right nor left.

"Gar!"

Beast Boy suddenly had to rethink his footing to stay standing when Brooke pounced on him with all the power her slight frame possessed.

"Uh…hey…" It was all he could lamely stammer in such close vicinity. The last girl that had hugged him so determinedly had been a pig-tailed five year old bursting with gratitude for him having rescued her from an apartment fire. Little Kari hadn't colored his cheeks the bright pink they were now.

"You saved me!" Brooke cried out, burying her face into her shoulder. "I thought I'd be shipped away and never see Earth again but you saved me!"

"N-no…problem…" he said, regaining his speech a little but he could only sacrifice his comfort on the matter and let her keep at it when he heard her sniff, felt her shake slightly. "Didn't think we'd end up here like this at the café that night, did you?"

His attempt at levity seemed to have little effect and she continued to carry on.

The next few things happened in rapid succession. The first student to reach the door grunted and strained but could not open the door despite that it had no lock. The two big jocks tried knocking it down but it bested them too. Noticing their struggle made Beast Boy pull away from Brooke a little to see and in that small movement her hold over him broke and his senses were no longer distracted.

Brooke had no scent.

Something nasty spasmed in his chest at the revelation but too late did Beast Boy move to shove her off of him and there was a sharp prick of metal in his neck. An unknown serum had been instantly been absorbed into his bloodstream and that was all the android needed to do. She let him proceed with shoving her off him the second after.

"Well," The girl's voice now rang in a pitiless way, her eyes dry, not programmed to cry. "We certainly didn't get the smarter of the two."

The students stared on in rising realization that could only sink in at half speed that one of their cellmates had been an android guard all along and not one had ever suspected anything different. Many tried ramming the door when Brooke's hands broke apart into long daggers.

Beast Boy clutched his neck where the injection still stung. "What did you just inject me with!?"

"Oh I don't think you would be able to repeat it back to me even if I told you," she replied as the rest of her human disguise continued to recede back and reform to reveal her true form. "Did you really think my master would leave his shipments completely unguarded for you to liberate? I have been prepared for the worst case scenario from day one. And as for rest of you," she said, addressing the students who were all now trying to break the door in earnest, "you're not getting through that door without my permission. I detonated a capsule that melted the metal into the frame."

When they were made aware of that the students presently tried to get as far from the android as the cramped basement allowed. Two of the girls however, taking courage from one another, came out from the group in a burst to grab their rescuer, haul him to safety.

"I don't need it!" he said with a slight bit too much harshness. Beast Boy pulled his arms away freeing himself as even after only a minute the serum was making him feel like he'd just gotten off the world's sickest tilt-a-whirl. He constantly pivoted his feet to keep from falling over but still refused to be pulled back into the safety of the group.

"Get over here, idiot!" Bradley yelled at him, at the front of the group to protect the girls. "That thing's going to kill you!"

Meanwhile his friend Chad rallied the girls who weren't going to return to imprisonment quietly and had them grab any crude weapon in sight. The android had spinning blades, laser beams and super speed and that was matched up against with only the blunt objects a caveman would use. These soft-faced, privileged students would surely lose and fast and with his role as a superhero Beast Boy couldn't let them get hurt.

"Get back in the cell!" Their very prison was the only safe place remaining.

His demand raised a mighty din of complaints and indignation.

Beast Boy had spent enough time with Robin that he instinctively projected the other boy's no-nonsense level of authority into his voice, one that promised unforgiving retribution if he wasn't heeded. "GO! I can handle this!"

His tone was intimidating enough to silence many of the girls but Chad and Bradley weren't convinced that the scrawny geek they'd picked on would survive. Bullying was one thing but letting someone die for them was another and they stepped forward, cracking their knuckles. They were pulled back by several girls so they couldn't pull free without making an ugly scene and as soon as they were behind the cell door Beast Boy returned the strip of metal remaining from the lock into the slot so no one could change their mind half way through.

Beast Boy took a wide stance so that his feet wouldn't trip him as he squared off against the robot. When the world around him was melting like a painting he couldn't focus on the specific features of her whirring blade-hands but could only focus on her outline and her exact shade of color that was different from the background.

"I think you've got about three minutes until you're floored," Android-Brooke commented dispassionately as she took a casual fighting stance in return. She nodded her head back to certain cabinet behind her. "The antidote is a bright blue liquid labeled with the number five. You'll need exactly half of the contents in the vial to negate the effects."

She crouched now in preparation to attack, her bladed hand whirring in anticipation.

Beast Boy grated his teeth, both to fight back the effects of the sedative overpowering him fast and that she had the nerve to play with him in such a way when she was at such an unfair advantage. There would be no backup this time, not when Robin was on the other side of the academy by now and he had only a few minutes instead of several.

She came swooping in like a blurry phantom caught between planes and, relying mostly on the sound of the blades, Beast Boy stumbled out of the way. When she was still running forward in momentum he changed into a crocodile to get down out of her immediate strike zone and he snapped those powerful jaws down where he thought her feet were, for once they chomped down nothing could open them again.

The android leapt into the air before he could snag her and her movements were far too fast and agile for the human she was impersonating. She wasn't going for a critical hit and rather landed on his tail instead, causing him to spasmodically change back to human to escape the pressure.

She was right there before him and wouldn't be in the following second so while he was still conscious Beast Boy lunged for the exact spot on the left leg where the computer chips laid. He punched a hole an inch deep into the metal flesh but instead of the android crumpling to the floor like her sisters had before her she simply gave a crooked smirk like it was a big joke she was only waiting to unveil.

"I'm on a different motherboard than the others and a different model," she informed him as she lifted him off the floor with a vicious upper cut to his chin. "You don't know where my chip is."

Beast Boy landed several feet away. With the pain exploding in his jaw and everything blurred now past all recognition, his consciousness was draining away fast and would be gone in seconds without the antidote.

He looked blearily to the location of the cabinet and he yanked on his scalp harshly enough to pull out hair, anything that would give him a few more seconds of consciousness. Beast Boy gritted his teeth; he had to close his eyes, fight his dizziness, to coordinate in his head where to place his hands and feet just to be able to stand.

He only had enough left in him for one final attack.

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Robin had thoroughly scanned through a fourth of the school for any readings when Batgirl finished with her assignment and helped him wrap up the rest. They both came up negative and met up again outside the dormitories, each shaking their head at the unsaid question.

"Looks like you guys called me back here unnecessarily after all," Robin teased a little when Batgirl could've uncovered the case much faster on her own at Cherrywood if only the evidence hadn't been at the other academy.

Batgirl shrugged like she didn't really care either way. "Whatever makes you come home, Robbie. You make sure you stay in touch this time."

"Mmm-hmm," he said dutifully. "I know the magnitude of that new "toy" of yours but you finished your assignment awfully fast, are you sure you-?"

She rolled her eyes, expecting it when she was and always would be the most junior member of the Gotham team. "Am I sure that none of those crawling bits decided to burrow away in the forest before we iced them? _Yes_, I'm sure! Just because I'm not a freak about my job like you and the Bat doesn't mean I'm not careful about it." She looked round the courtyard. "Where's the green guy?"

"He should still have a bit more investigating to do. I was going to go help him take care of the rest of the school and B-!"

To spare Beast Boy's identity, Batgirl cut Robin off immediately when she saw that Beast Boy was in his human form and being supported by a couple students through the doors. He swayed and he looked as if he would surely collapse if either of the girls were to loosen their grip. Robin and Batgirl rushed over at once but couldn't treat him differently than any other civilian.

"Are the rest of you are okay?" Batgirl checked though the students only looked a little worn from being prisoners for days on end. "What happened to this boy? Is there anything still chasing you?"

"No, we're all fine," said the girl Rowan, stepping up, and it was a little disconcerting to see her real self when Robin had only just decapitated her double. "We don't know how he did it but Gar took down that guard robot all by himself."

Another girl piped up, "We gave him the antidote to the serum he was injected with but he's still a little woozy."

"He's going to be okay, isn't he?" one of the girls supporting him asked in worry.

"We'll take care of him," Robin said a little too quickly but none of the students noticed; seeing his friend sagging there with such little energy when he was usually bursting with it bothered him more than he could show. He told the students to head over to the boy's academy where things were being put in order and he relieved the girls supporting Beast Boy just as soon as he could.

Robin was aided by Batgirl and they helped Beast Boy sit down without stumbling, laid him up against the trunk of a tree.

Robin was a little harsh but not because he was mad. "Why didn't you call for backup?"

"No time," Beast Boy mumbled back vaguely and he was only looking in Robin's general direction, unable it seemed to pinpoint his exact location. "S'fine, all I need to do is sleep it off." Even just saying that aloud, the boy started to take his own advice.

"Batman should be wrapping up the case back at the academy," Batgirl commented as she parked it beside Beast Boy. The offhand way she phrased it suggested that if Robin left now he could still get in and close _his_ case, prove to Batman that his presence was never really required there at all.

His masked eyes did stray towards the boy's academy in a few moments consideration but he sat down beside his teammates instead. Batgirl smiled a little smile of approval for his decision to stay with his ill friend. The two former teammates hadn't really had a chance to talk in the two years they'd been apart so Batgirl started up conversation on what had been going on in his absence while Robin detailed what it was like being the leader of a team. There had been bad blood between them before but that seemed to fade away when they talked about the crime-fighting that had originally brought them together.

"Mmmm," Beast Boy groaned from up against the tree, drawing their attention.

"You okay, B?" Robin asked. "We should really get a blood sample to make sure-"

"Hmmph!"

'BB?" Batgirl wondered over his sudden outburst.

Beast Boy opened his eyes again. Before they had just been a little blurry and out of focus but now they were downcast and not making direct contact with either of them. "There were hundreds of women and girls in that school that were captured, a few guys from our school, and they were all sold across the galaxy like cattle. I only saved fourteen of them…just fourteen. The rest of them…" he trailed off and his guilt spread to the others like a contagious disease, "what must they be going through?"

"I couldn't have known that I'd given you the wrong academy," Batgirl said but her conviction was weak even though her words were true.

"I should've been paying more attention to the way those two androids were acting at that café," Robin admitted, sharing a part of that guilt. He'd just been focusing on everything else that night, their false suspects, the wasabi burning his tongue and of course the fiasco with the Penguin. It would be a poor excuse to give to Batman after all he'd done to make it on his own, that the real culprits had been right under his nose and he'd never even suspected. He'd jumped the gun on this one and had been horribly shot.

"If only we'd been paying more attention…" Beast Boy trailed on gloomily, "we could've saved more of them."

"B, this operation most likely is spread out to other academies across the nation," Batgirl said in effort to lift their spirits a little. "Any operation with Renwei's name on it will be stripped and searched and taken down immediately. The Justice League will get the leads, they'll track the missing students down and return them to their families. The League never fails at things like this."

"But I did," Beast Boy murmured almost too low for them to pick up and Robin wilted a little too, feeling similarly.

If he were to stay there sitting on the grass for much longer Robin's mood might have sunk lower going over all the things he should've seen and done as a capable leader, the perfect path the Bat would've taken without a second thought. He got up and he helped his friend get to his feet.

"Come on, Beast Boy," Robin said as he pressed the button on his communicator to signal his fifth of the T-Ship. "This is the League's mission now and we have Jump to look after so let's just go home. You can ride in the backseat this time."

"Thanks, man," Beast Boy breathed. His head was bowed and not visible as Robin helped him walk and so Robin missed Beast Boy's lips pull back in a wicked grin and the red glow that burned from his eyes. "Beast Boy" had the appearance of a normal peach-skinned human but his holographic generator rings were nowhere to be found.

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And that's all she wrote! Thanks for reading everyone and stayed tuned for the sequel!

Arual-san


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